


What the Deaf Man Heard

by steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeb



Series: What the Deaf Man Heard [1]
Category: Hawkeye (2012)
Genre: American Sign Language, BAMF Clint Barton, Complete, Contains mentions of sexual abuse of a minor, Deaf Clint Barton, Explicit Language, F/M, For once I write a story where Clint does not feel sorry for himself the entire time, NaNoWriMo, Will edit throught December and January, offensive language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 15:31:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 17
Words: 53,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2552594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeb/pseuds/steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint doesn't have superpowers.  He doesn't control lightning, he doesn't have super strength, and he most certainly was not a genius.  But he's discovered that as long as his hearing aids are in, people will assume a lot about his ability (or lack thereof) to hear what they are saying.</p><p>So he runs with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sunday, November 30th

Clint liked going to this particular diner on Sundays. The church crowd was yet to descend on it this early in the morning to overcrowd the small space, and he could drink his coffee without being overwhelmed by the noise. He rarely spoke to people, few people even tried to talk to him, and when he did it sounded more like a grunt than anything. So Clint sat alone in the corner with his mug and toast and watched New York ignore him.

A new waitress began working a few weeks ago, and Clint would honestly say he liked her. Not in a romantic way, just for the fact that she defended him from her co-workers who lost their patience when he pointed at things on the menu. Clint never ordered anything complicated, usually just coffee and toast or a bowl of oatmeal, and it wasn't his fault whoever designed the menu made the print tiny. But the waiters had other tables to tend and forcing them to slow down obviously made some of them anxious. Whatever. That was their problem. 

His large purple hearing aids that rest on the back of his ears and the off-white earmolds that he shoved into his ear canals every morning made him stand out in a bad way, and for months he felt self-conscious about wearing them in public. Barney threatened to duct tape them to his head at some point. Clint hated the way people tried hard not to stare at his ears, trying to hide fleeting glances, or when they spoke slowly and over-exaggerated everything. That frustrated him to no end. People were harder to understand when they did that and Clint had the patience of an caged honey badger so he usually just walked away from those conversations. He could be a mature adult later.

There was one unexpected perk: when people saw his hearing aids, they automatically assumed he could not hear their conversation. And in truth he could not hear some parts only because people change the pitch and loudness of their voices, but for the most part he could follow conversations without the party in question realizing he was eavesdropping. Since he began frequenting the diner he learned a lot about some of the waiters and waitresses and cooks: one waiter was blowing a cook in the back to keep his job (apparently the waiter in question was usually late for his shifts), a waitress just received the news that her daughter was accepted to Harvard last week, and the new waitress liked to watch black and white movies. 

So not all the things that he picked up were important. If anything they were entertaining. The diner crew was his own little soap opera that never had a discernible plot and changed frequently. Barney thought Clint was just being dumb, but he had to find something to do since he was yet to figure out how to put subtitles on his TV and the only cellphone he owned was SHIELD property so he couldn't use it for personal means. Now that he had Lucky back he could go to the park and throw a frisbee or a baseball, but right now the temperature of New York was seriously starting to drop and too long in the cold made his knuckles lock up. When he signed, the cold made his hands stutter.

Kate tried to sign with him, but she the only words she knew with any sort of consistency were _yes, no_ and _dog._ But she really did try, and Clint could see in her eyes when she became frustrated with herself that she wasn't doing as well as she would like. It was a massive blow to her ego when something that almost exclusively involved hands was difficult for her and she did not master it quickly. Hell, Clint still had trouble with some signs but now that he signed all the time with Barney he was improving. 

He could still speak, and he spoke with Kate when she was at the apartment. He spoke with his tenants and the kids when they needed him and talked with members of SHIELD or the Avengers. Thor was enamored with signing for whatever reason. Cap already knew a number of military signs so he picked up a few others quickly. Tony immediately wanted to digitize and computerize and basically be a nerd about it all but his facial hair made him difficult to read and Tony's patience lasted about as long as Clint's. Nat knew a number of languages, but signing did not come naturally to her. Her facial expressions were difficult to read in spoken conversation let alone a language that was entirely dependent on them. And Phil Fucking Coulson was completely fluent. 

The new waitress walked over to his table with a carafe in her hand and pointed to his coffee cup. Clint dragged the cup across the table for her to refill, smiling at her as she did so. She had a nice smile, it seemed genuine enough. And she tried to meet him in the middle in terms of communication. She enunciated but not overly so, and she was patient with him when he pointed at the menu. Sometimes she wrote him a note to clarify something with his order, but Clint avoided writing at all costs. His handwriting was worse than atrocious. 

Her name, at least the name on her tag, was Eleanor. Most of the other staff just called her Ellie or El, but Clint liked Eleanor. It seemed old-fashioned and his mom had an old-fashioned name. Clint heard her last name a while ago but he'd since forgotten it, it started with a B. So he always smiled at her and tipped her when he knew the others would not pocket her tip. Next time Clint would break that waiter's fingers if he caught him stealing from her tables again. 

Eleanor flipped her chocolate-colored hair behind her ear and scribbled on her ticket booklet. _Need anything?_ Clint smiled and shook his head, giving her a thumb-up. That was usually the entirety of his interaction at the diner. Other than that he listened to those around him. 

_You know we should repaint the hallway-_

_I swear if that fucker doesn't pay up sometime soon-_

_And then I told Jackie all about how he was a total creep. I mean look at these texts! He obviously needs to-_

_Madame wants to move tonight. Especially since we know who her father is._

That stopped Clint, his cup halfway to his lips. To his right sitting at the booth on the opposite wall were two men, burly and ill-kempt. Standard B-movie intimidation crew. Clint angled himself so he could see across the diner and keep their faces in his periphery, if anything that would help him understand the conversation somewhat. He continued munching away, albeit slowly and looked at them only while drinking so the cup obscured his face. One of the brutes, the smaller one, looked across the diner before Clint could look away and snarled at him through his crooked teeth that were most likely pulverized into whatever structure of teeth he currently had in his mouth. 

"What do you want?"

Clint stared back, his face blank. If he was going to further listen to their conversation they had to believe he could not hear a damn thing, which would make him less of a threat than a sloth in their eyes and he would be ignored. Clint could work with it.

"I asked you a question, asshole." The larger man grinned over his food, enjoying the scene that was about to take place. He gestured at the smaller man with a fork.

"Come on, Jerry, he's probably retarded," said the larger man. The smaller man, Jerry, stood and walked over to Clint's table, leaning over Clint in an attempt to be intimidating. Truthfully Clint had encountered toddlers more intimidating than this Jerry fellow.

"You got a problem, motherfucker?" To emphasize his point, Jerry reached for Clint's shirt collar and yanked him upwards and out of the booth. They were actually about the same height now that the guy was standing right in Clint's face. But Clint had to put on a show, so he held his hands up with the most panicked look on his face he could imagine as Jerry slammed up against the wall, rattling some of the pictures of the original owner. Clint alternated between signing _help_ furiously or holding his hands up as if a gun were trained on him. 

Eleanor ran up to them, her carafe abandoned on the main counter, and tugged on Jerry's arm. "Hey, let him go, stop it! Hey! He's deaf, leave him alone, drop him!" She continued shouting into Jerry's ear until the main shoved Clint once more for good measure and stalked back to his seat. The taller man resumed eating, laughing to himself and shaking his head. Jerry grabbed the provided dinner knife and gripped it until his knuckles turned white.

Clint stood with his hands up until Eleanor turned around to face him, patting his wrist. "Hey, are you alright? Okay?" She gave him a thumb-up with her eyebrows raised, concern flooding her features. She was pale but her cheeks were quickly becoming blushed from the excitement. Clint lowered his hands and barely nodded, sitting down slowly as if traumatized by the event. But she said the magic words: he's deaf. Clint was officially at the bottom of their threat list so he could listen without their scrutiny. Eleanor flipped back to the first page in her ticket booklet and tapped Clint on the shoulder, waving the booklet at him. It was the same 'need anything' page as before, only with random doodles added while she stood at the counter in-between customers. He tapped on his empty water glass, watching as she plucked it from his hand and dashed off only to return less than a minute later. Eleanor pat his shoulder again and went back to busing other tables. 

Jerry had since released his tense fingers on the dinner knife and went back to stabbing at his food. "Fucking retards, Oz, they're everywhere. Need to lock 'em up someplace."

The taller man waved Jerry off. "Don't bitch, he's harmless. Not one of 'em that make those weird noises and flail all over the place. Just eat your eggs so we can go back and figure out what the plan is. I ain't got all fucking morning and I'd like to be rid of this girl by Christmas, if anything."

Jerry cut into his sausage and snorted. "Yeah, like that'll happen. Masque plans out every detail down to the minute, I dunno how she manages to do that. She'd want us to do it exactly like she says or she'll cut off a limb or something." 

Oz nodded in agreement, grunting as he swallowed the last of his pancake. "I thought tonight we were just talking about buildings or some shit, not the actual plan. I thought that was next week."

"Yeah, you're probably right. Hell we're close enough to the place, if it is next week we'll just come back to this hole and wait. Maybe next time I'll punch a cripple or something, since this place is full of 'em. You got the check?" They stood to leave, gathering coats and gloves into their arms. Clint watched as they stood and made a show of sinking back into his booth the closer Jerry got to him. Jerry stopped in front of the table for a split second and feigned as if he were going to launch at him, and Clint ducked instinctively with his arms raised. When he looked up once again, Jerry was striding off to join the Oz guy, his grin stretching his cheek to the point that Clint could see it even from behind. Eleanor rang them out, not hiding the disdain on her face. Bastards didn't even tip her.

However the two were connected to Masque, they certainly didn't recognize Clint and that worked to his advantage. Even if they reported back to Masque about some deaf guy in the diner, Masque wouldn't know who that was since she only knew Clint as hearing. But she was up to something, and Clint needed to know what that could be. Masque had a habit of leaving ordered destruction in her wake, the center of a hurricane that made her untouchable and therefore unable to be prosecuted. And Clint had an idea who the father and the girl were, Kate and her dad, but Clint needed to be sure. He needed to protect Kate.

Eleanor walked back to the booth and tugged Clint's check from her booklet. He looked at the front once, looked up at her for a moment. That's when the idea hit him. He could use her as an excuse to be at the diner every week. Her schedule always had her working at the diner on Sunday mornings, and the other waiters and waitresses knew Clint as a regular so they could plant the ideas in her head. Yeah, that would work.

Clint flipped over the check and motioned for something to write with. As much as he hated writing, he would do what he needed to protect Kate. Even if it meant break someone's heart.

 _will you be hier next sunday?_ Clint held up the slip, embarrassment showing on his face. The fact that his writing was practically unintelligible was always a major problem in his life, to the point that all his mission debriefings and reports were recorded by audio so he wouldn't have to write them. Coulson tried his best to get Clint's handwriting from kindergarten chicken scratch to something readable but as much as Clint practiced his brain refused to make sense of it. When he lost his hearing, his writing made him seem even more dumb. He was stupid before, and now that stupidity increased exponentially. Barney dragged Clint out of an orphanage in the middle of the night when Clint had just turned 8, so he never formally finished the second grade. By then he could write his name, but that was about it. When it came to reading, he was at a complete loss. Some of the letters would flip on him, and others he couldn't make sense of because the letters used didn't make any sense. Silent letters and double letters always escaped him, and what little he actually wrote was usually missing those letters. Coulson got him to the point that he could read most things, newspapers and some books that had familiar words, so he wasn't a complete failure. But he was approaching 30 and he could write enough to get him through the day and sign his name on official documents, so Clint figured that was all he needed.

Eleanor squinted at the paper to make sense of what she was reading. When comprehension dawned she smiled and nodded at him, hand the ticket back. Clint pretended to debate writing for a moment. _can I see you agen?_ He hesitated before sliding it back to her. She read over the ticket and bit her lip, blushing as she nodded. She reached for the pen in his hand and set it on her ticket book, scribbling quickly.

 _Of course you can. And don't worry about today, on the house._ Clint lumbered through the note and grinned back at her as he stood, grabbing his jacket and pulling his toboggan out of the front pocket. He smiled at her as if completely smitten, over-doing it somewhat so the other staff would see. If he could make the staff think he was pining for her, he could be there every Sunday. He already went most Sundays, but if the staff thought he had some type of puppy-love crush on Eleanor, maybe they would leave him alone and let him be without asking him if he wanted the check because my shift ends in five minutes and you've been here since 8 and you don't tip well enough to justify being here. Oh yes, people said a lot of things with reckless abandon when they thought Clint could not hear them.

He walked back out into the chilly New York air, pulling his toboggan low. If it meant protecting Kate, he would do whatever needed to be done. He debated telling her his plan but figured it would be best if she had no idea what was going down so she wouldn't change her behavior patterns and blow the whole operation. But he'd tell Barney as soon as he got back to the apartment. Barney is probably going to gut-punch him again for this.


	2. Sunday, November 30th (Afternoon)

Clint spent much of the remainder of his Sunday collecting rent from the tenants who could pay that month. He never actually kept records or books of any kind, usually tenants paid what they could and that was that. If they wanted to paint, add cable or internet, satellite, whatever--that was the tenants responsibility but in terms of rent Clint tried to collect just enough to keep the electricity, heat, and plumbing running throughout the building. Some of his neighbors made mistakes that they were still paying for, and Clint made plenty of mistakes on his own so he could not fault someone for trying to make his life better. His tenants shouldn't be punished for trying to pull themselves up again.

Either Barney or Kate turned on the heat in the apartment, and the heat slapped him in the face as soon as he unlocked the door and walked in. Lucky stood at the door wagging his tail, sniffing around Clint's midsection for anything interesting. Lucky needed some training to keep from jumping on people he knew when excited, and more than once Lucky knocked over Simone's smallest kid in his excitement. Clint pointed at the ground until Lucky calmed enough to sit, then scratched at his ears and leaned over so Lucky could kiss him. Looking at the ground, he felt something soft land on the back of his head. Barney wheeled himself into the room and waved at him.

 _You turn the heat on?_ Clint usually signed with Barney, unless Barney had the bathroom door closed or something in which case Clint would speak verbally in a very one-sided conversation. He still had difficulty modulating the loudness of his own voice, and Barney never called attention to the grunts Clint made while signing. But Clint could still be understood when he wasn't also being a lazy bastard. SHIELD was yet to create a voice modulator that would make him intelligible across coms, and his hearing aids didn't give him enough clarity for the type of field work he typically did. Since the injury, Clint was back to doing grunt work and he hated it. He'd rather just stay home.

Barney wheeled himself to the island that separated the kitchen and living room, locking the wheels and scooting himself to the edge of the seat so he could pull himself into a standing position. It took Barney months just to be able to pull himself up and keep his legs locked so that he wouldn't fall over, although he was yet to be able to put alternating weight on his legs to walk without someone helping him shuffle along. At the physical therapist's office Barney could get about five feet with a walker before he was exhausted. So Clint drilled a solid block into the countertop that allowed Barney to grip something while he stood on his own for a bit. If anything, Barney's mood improved over the past few weeks.

_I was cold. Blanket, too big. Rent checks are there. Simone wants to know if you want to eat dinner with us and the kids tonight._

_Us?_ Clint raised his eyebrow and grinned at Barney, flipping through some of the checks. If anything he received enough to keep the water running for the month. Electricity and heat would have to come out of his pay, which SHIELD was still trying to figure out. He was insured by SHIELD, but where his injury occurred off-duty he was not owed injury reparations. But it was also keeping him on the bench, and SHIELD didn't want to let him go just yet. Probably Coulson's doing. And Clint refused to sit at a desk and be a paper-pusher if he could help it. He'd only managed to get himself to the point that he didn't allow himself to fall off the roof onto the pavement a few weeks ago, if he went back to work demoted his mood would also plummet. 

For the first six weeks or so, Clint was an absolute wreck and he would readily admit that. He slept most of the day, rarely showered or did anything to take care of himself. Barney checked in on him every so often to make sure he was still breathing, if anything. But Clint had lost a bit of weight, which included some muscle mass. It wasn't until Barney convinced him to get up and _do something_ did he finally drag himself out of bed, into his suit, and across town to set fire to those fuckers' hide-out. And damn, did that feel good.

Barney was more bitter than anything. He never fully told Clint the details about what happened between that night and the time they woke up and were coherent enough to recognize where they were. Clint never responded well to medications, particularly morphine or any drug that put him to sleep. Ever since he joined SHIELD he woke up needing to be restrained more often than not. This trip was no different; after he got out of surgery to repair his ear canals, MRIs run to make sure his brain was alright, his ear canal re-opened to reduce swelling, when he was allowed to wake up he came up swinging. Usually he was not as violent, he might try to sit up too quickly and struggle against whoever held him, but this time he _fought._ He fought to sit up, pulling at leads and wires, scratching at the bandages around his head and hyper-reacting whenever a nurse came too close. Without the ability to hear, neither the nurses nor Jess could soothe him as he managed to get himself out of bed, shoving nurses as he went. Even though he was delirious, he still had his upper-body strength. 

Jess had called Coulson specifically as soon as he was wheeled into his room, but she did not expect Clint to be taken off the meds so quickly. Security was called and Clint still managed to struggle with three guards trying to hold him down and a nurse prepping a sedative. When Coulson arrived with SHIELD agents and nurses who were used to Clint's hospital meltdowns, the altercation lasted long enough for the guards to let him go and the agents to keep him down for good. Three minutes later he slumped against the floor and tried to curl himself back into a ball, something Coulson had seen only a handful of times. It was a defense mechanism from when Clint was a little boy--if he stayed curled up like this, daddy couldn't hurt him. Coulson practically laid on the ground next to him until Clint unclenched himself ten minutes later and looked at those in the room; he was still obviously hazy, but he could recognize Coulson and Coulson's hand squeezing his shoulder. Clint had been beaten, bruised, tortured, waterboarded, just about everything under the sun, but Coulson was always patient enough to wait for Clint to calm down before throwing too much information at him at once. For the past ten years and at Coulson's request, medical had been keeping records of what reduced and what increased Clint's violent behaviors when he woke up and Coulson managed to figure out a few things that helped: no harsh lighting directly above him (because that made Clint feel as if he were captured in some way), keep the lights lower but not dark, don't cover his hands. Above all no restraints, no matter how bad it got. A doctor once restrained him and Clint managed to get ahold of a scalpel while his arm was being sutured; Clint nearly blinded the doctor before he was coherent enough to understand what he was doing. Since then the last time restraints were used was when Natasha brought him in to sweat out Loki. 

After he calmed down enough to be moved back to the bed, Coulson stayed with him for a while and tried to explain what happened but nothing actually connected. Clint barely remembered the hospital at all. He didn't remember anyone telling him that Barney coded once, though Coulson swears he did. Clint didn't remember sitting with Barney waiting for him to wake up. He just didn't remember a lot. But he remembered sitting in the audiologist's office the day they were discharged and reading over her computer screen multiple times to make sure he could comprehend it. He remembered watching her mouth move and her face never changing its expression, and Barney's hands moving while he talked with her but never making a distinct sign, not until they were in the taxi and neither said a word until they were in front of the apartment building. Clint didn't sign at all for three days. He didn't talk, he barely moved. Since Clint's bed was up in the loft, Barney couldn't wheel himself up there to check on him and he didn't want Simone or the neighbors to even look at Clint in the state he was in, so Coulson dropped by in the evening and Jess would stop in during the morning to make sure he hadn't hanged himself or something. They got him up to use the bathroom and force him to eat something, but beyond that Clint was dead weight.

At some point they got him to at least be dead weight on the couch during the day, and Coulson figured out that Clint felt absolutely _useless_. And he was, he was completely useless while being a 30 year old brat. So he talked with Barney, figured out Barney's physical therapy schedule and what Clint could do to help, and that managed to at least get him up and moving. Maybe not a happy camper, but Clint was at least getting himself up to use the bathroom or get something out of the fridge for himself. He helped Barney get himself back into his wheelchair in the mornings, helped him extend and retract his legs, helped Barney get into the shower. That part was awkward, and Barney tried to get that over with as quickly as possible. Somehow they made it work, and the more they worked together, the more Clint would sign. One or two word phrases at first, then slowly adding more to his sentences. Torching the Tracksuit Mafia's hideout figuratively (and literally) set a fire under Clint's ass and he was predominantly back to being his dickish self. A talkative dick, if anything. 

Simone was probably the most helpful of his tenants, and she made sure the two were fed. If she didn't make something herself, she made sure they had eaten something on their own. Her boys always made Clint force a smile, and that usually perked his mood. Now, months later, Clint was back to dropping himself on the couch between the two and pulling them under his arms to watch a cartoon while Lucky lazed about at his feet. The older boy would sometimes point at something in the apartment, and even if Clint couldn't see his face he could tell the boy (André) was asking how to sign whatever the object was. The kids picked it up as if they were born signing, although the smaller boy (Jeremiah) had trouble making the handshapes. It was hard for Clint to believe that he wasn't a baby anymore. He still remembered the day Simone brought Jeremiah home after he was born. Now he was saying "Baba" or "Unca Baba" whenever Barney was in the room. Clint couldn't tell if Jeremiah had even tried saying his name yet.

Barney spent a lot of time with her, probably to get away from Clint. But there was something else going on, and Clint could see it in the way they looked at each other. The way Barney's facial features softened when her or the kids were in the apartment, or the way he asked other tenants about her. He spent quite a bit of time in her apartment now that Clint was up and moving again. And sometimes the boys would be asleep on Clint's couch and Simone would be sitting on Barney's lap or very close to him. Clint could see something was up, he wasn't _that_ dumb, but he couldn't figure out the extent of their relationship if there was one at all.

After Clint ran through the stack of checks and tucked them into an envelope for deposit, he waved his hand at Barney. _Something I need to talk to you about._

 _How'd you fuck up this time?_ Barney leaned back and pulled himself forward as if doing standing sit-ups to get his circulation moving. 

_I haven't. Not yet. You know that diner I go to? Guys connected to the Draculas were there, I overheard them talk about Masque._

Barney stopped midway and pulled himself up again. _You pick up anything useful?_

_I'm not sure, they were talking about a hit on a girl and her dad but I didn't catch a name if they said one at all. Think it could be Kate?_

Kate was not at the top of Barney's 'like' list. Most days they bickered at each other, and Barney hated the fact that some brat was allowed to come and go as she pleased. _Why do you want to get mixed up in all that? Seriously, her dad has more money than is feasible to spend in a lifetime. If I wasn't stuck in this thing I'd probably try to bankroll him._

Clint grinned, scratching at the stubble on his face. Barney could probably still figure out a way to rob Bishop without walking. _They're meeting next week at the same place, I'm gonna go back and see if I pick up anything else._

_Hold up, how are you even getting any info?_

_They think I can't hear them at all. Actually the whole place thinks that, it's helpful. They leave me alone for the most part, but there's one waitress that talks to me sometimes. She's sweet enough._ Clint went to lean back against the counter but immediately stood up again when Barney looked down at his feet, screwing up his face in concentration. Clint watched Barney try and force his legs to respond to whatever his brain was telling them, grabbing Barney's shoulder when he managed to shuffle one foot back towards his chair. "You got it?" Barney looked up at hearing Clint's rusty voice and nodded. Two more steps and Barney was close enough to drop himself back down in the seat.

 _See what you can get next week. But don't do anything stupid, although me telling you that is like telling a stripper not to take her clothes off. You're gonna do something dumb anyway._ Barney stretched his back as much as he could and unlocked his wheels. _Just be careful, baby bro._

_I'm always careful._

Barney threw a dishrag at Clint's face before he rolled out the front door.


	3. Sunday, December 7th

Although Clint liked going to the diner, he also hated getting up in the morning. He would do so if he were ordered to get up, but nine times out of ten he would prefer to just stay in bed until his body was no longer tired or Barney threw enough objects into the loft that he woke up. Barney forced Clint to at least move his bed to the edge so that Clint could look over the railing and they could see each other to sign, but that also meant Barney could throw items at Clint and whack him in the face with various objects. Lucky always thought Barney was playing a game and would usually get excited enough to start hopping on his back legs and barking and if Barney threw one of Lucky's chew toys he would race up the steps and jump on Clint's bed to retrieve it, sniffing around the sheets and pawing at them until he found his toy. Eventually Clint would haul himself out of bed or at least sit up enough to see what was going on and then rub at his eyes for a few moments until he was awake while Lucky licked at his face or whined to go out. 

When he decided on his impromptu plan last week it made getting up early much easier. Beforehand without any goal in mind he would go early in the morning (because he was yet to actually go to sleep) or right at the tail end of breakfast which always annoyed the cook who had to drag everything back out again. This morning he was up before Barney, who snored away on the couch. Clint couldn't hear him snore, not without his hearing aids in, but he remembered that Barney was fairly loud and the first week Barney stayed Lucky sat in front of the couch and perked his ears or whined whenever Barney snored. Lucky would sit up and sniff at Barney or shuffle around the couch in fear that something were wrong, but after the first week Lucky acclimated and curled up next to the couch. Clint would snore if his nose was broken, but hyper-vigilance and the need for quiet during missions beat the habit out of him. 

He dug through the drawer under the coffee pot for his hearing aids, fiddling with the battery door of one before snapping it closed and shoving the mold into his ear. As he put in the other side, Lucky padded his way over and sniffed at his feet for either attention or food, probably both. Clint patted his hip and caught Lucky's front paws, standing the dog up and bending low for Lucky to lick at his face. "Hey, bud. Be good today, okay?" 

Lucky dropped back to the floor and circled the general area of his food bowl, eventually sitting expectantly until Clint opened the closet for the dog food. Lucky had his human trained. Originally Clint kept the food bag in a cabinet, but Lucky figured out how to nudge open the cabinet door with his nose and nearly ate through an entire bag in one day. Since then the kibble was kept in a closet with a regular door knob, which Lucky often sat by as if the door would magically manifest kibble to fill his bowl. For all Lucky knew, the closet just refilled the bag of kibble every day. And he liked when Barney filled up the bowl because he often poured more than Clint did because he could not bend down that low and the kibble usually spilled over onto the floor. When Lucky was busy munching away, his snout buried too far into the bowl to care, Clint tugged on his coat and toboggan and stepped into the hallway, locking the door behind him.

Compared to the apartment, the temperature on the streets was frigid. Clint shoved his hands into the pockets of his coats and angled his head downward. At one point he stopped to turn his hearing aids off; wind plus a scratchy toboggan covering the microphones on his hearing aids made an annoying _swish, swish_ sound with every step he took, and Clint did not mind blocking out some of the noise of the traffic. Above the city on a roof or a few stories above the ground the blaring car horns and obscenities people shouted were not that overwhelming but sometimes down on the ground Clint felt stifled by it all. He could block it all out when he was on some kind of mission but walking alone without any distractions Clint had difficulty escaping the onslaught of noise. As he neared the exterior of the diner he sped up, jogging the last few feet and ducking inside before the cold seeped into his bones.

Like every Sunday, the crowd was sparse. He noticed Eleanor at the grill station and quickly walked to his regular booth, in the back against the left corner. With his toboggan off and tucked into his jacket he could turn his hearing aids back on. Each time he did so there was always three seconds off noise-assault in each of his ears and Clint often left his hearing aids off as long as he possibly could to delay that sound. Those moments reminded him of how much hearing he was missing. 

As he pretended to comb over the menu, he scanned the dining area for the thugs from last week. There was a very high possibility that they wouldn't show at all, and if they didn't Clint would have to start sneaking around hideouts scattered around Bedstuy. Not something he looked forward to. As he scanned, a waiter noticed his presence and leaned over the grill window to whisper at Eleanor. She turned around and scanned through the diners until she matched eyes with Clint and smiled. He grinned back and waved, ducking his head and feigning shyness. It was the exact opposite of his usual tactics when he had a girl he wanted to get close to, so he was not sure if he was overdoing the shy game or not enough. When he looked up once again, Eleanor strolled over to his table with a carafe and empty ceramic mug in her hands. Clint waved at her again as she set the mug in front of him and filled it to the brim. She knew his preferences: straight black, no cream, no sugar. 

Eleanor reached behind her back, and for a moment Clint fought the urge to instinctually grab her wrist and drop her in case of a weapon. Instead she pulled out her ticket booklet and began scribbling on the front page just as the two goons from the previous week stalked through the front entrance. Immediately Clint grabbed her wrist and tugged her down, pointing to the seat across from him. If he was going to listen to the two men, Oz and Jerry, Clint needed a direct line of sight. Eleanor standing in front of him would only block or absorb the sound. She continued scribbling against the table as the smaller man, Jerry, walked past Clint's table and repeated the feigned lunge he did last week and, just like last week, Clint jumped and crunched down into the booth. "Hey Oz, I think Dummy _wants_ me to beat the shit out of him. You'd think he'd take the hint from last week."

Eleanor looked up from her ticket book as soon as Jerry spoke, pointing her pen at the goons' booth. "Go sit with your boyfriend and leave us alone," she shot back as if her words were shot from a pistol. If it were any other day, Clint would grin and follow up her comment with something equally as smart, but Clint made no indication that he heard her. Instead he stared at Jerry's lips and made no sign of comprehension. Jerry looked back at Oz, who was seated with his legs positioned outside the booth and his arm across the divider, and waved his hands around in random patterns. "Are. You. Retarded-"

"That's enough," Eleanor shouted at him, jabbing her pen at his chest. The rise in volume in her voice alerted other waiters to turn and look in their direction, and a cook stepped from around the grill and into the dining area. With that much attention focused on the small group, Jerry inched backward to his booth, grinning wickedly. When he sat down, Eleanor reached across the table and tapped Clint's wrist, causing him to jump. Even if he was 'playing dumb' he still had an extremely high startle reflex. SHIELD shrinks had a field day with him about that.

She waited until Clint turned around and slid her ticket book towards him. _Don't worry about them. They're just being jerks. Are you okay?_

Clint grinned and held up his thumb, waving at the goons as if dismissing them and holding his hand out for the pen. _I am ok their not worth it_. He always had trouble with words that sounded alike but had various spellings: _they're, their,_ and _there. Two, too, to. Red, read. Here, hear._

Eleanor read over Clint's writing and snatched the pen back. As she wrote, Clint focused what he could hear across the aisle. Nothing important yet, the goons were deciding what to order and calling each other every expletive in the book. Eleanor flipped the book around once again. _What is your name?_

He grabbed the pen and was about to tell her the truth, he was going to write _Clint_ , but then he stopped as soon as his pen hit the paper. If Eleanor were to ever say his name aloud and the goons were in the vicinity, the whole charade would be bust because even if they didn't know what he looked like Masque had probably mentioned his name at least once. Clint annoyed the shit out of her enough times. So he had to use his middle name.

_Frank_

Well, that was close enough to his middle name. Clint never liked the name Francis to begin with, and sometimes in the circus some of the other roustabouts would call him 'Fred' (for Barney and Fred on _The Flintstones._ ) And Clint knew they had a grandfather named Frank, Barney told Clint about the small handful of memories he had of the man, but Clint never knew if Frank was short for Francis. Since he rarely ever used his middle name or any variation, his writing looked even more stilted than usual on the small booklet. 

Eleanor held her hand up and hesitated. _F-R-S-M-K?_ She had to pause to run through the alphabet for the right letter, looking at the ceiling in concentration. Clint didn't even try to stop the grunt of approval he made, it was a sweet gesture for her to try and learn the alphabet over the course of the week. He pulled her arm closer and put his large wiry hands on top of hers, moving her fingers into the correct shapes. _F-R-A-N-K._ Clint held her hand for a moment and forced himself to blush (he had to think of the first time Bobbi went down on him; she was practically sinful). Eleanor bit her lip and tried to hide her smile. Suddenly she jerked her hand back when he rubbed her palm, looking at her hand and then at Clint's, turning over his palm and tracing the thick calluses along his fingers. He lost sensation in the skin around the tips of his fingers years ago, but he could feel that his fingers scratched against her smooth digits.

_What happened to your fingers? Do they hurt?_

Clint mouthed the words as he read them then shook his head, dipping the end of his finger in the scalding coffee to show her the lack of sensation. The skin was yellowed and hard at this point and more than once Clint accidentally burned the tips of his fingers without realizing. If anything paper cuts were rare. _I do archery._ He wasn't sure if he spelled it right, so he drew a small bow and arrow off to the side.

 _That's really cool. Is it a hobby?_ Clint shook his fist and nodded. _Does that mean 'yes'?_ Eleanor repeated the motion and Clint smiled at her. And so they went back and forth, slowly uncovering minute details about each other that were unimportant. Ages, birthdates, favorite food. And Clint tried his hardest to spell the words properly, and sometimes she would point and look up expectantly for Clint to show her how to sign the word. He could see whenever he struggled to write something, or wrote the stupid lower-case d backwards or out of order, that she pitied him. Maybe she thought he was stupid. Probably. Either way Clint was there for a reason. He tuned his attention across the aisle once again, listening to what he could hear. With Eleanor occupying some of his attention, even if she wasn't speaking, Clint missed chunks.

"...if we go down Kent, pass the [b]ratt Institute...into the Atlant--"

"Do you know how much traffic is diverted there every day at 2? Christ, you're as dumb as your cripple-friend over there." Eleanor's head shot up and gave them a dirty scowl. She was awfully protective of someone she barely knew, and that made Clint somewhat nervous. Loyalty had to be gained, it couldn't be given. In between speaking the goons would bite into something, which made understanding even more difficult when they shoved food into their faces. Oz, the taller man, paused for a moment. "You get anything yet?"

Out of his periphery, Clint could see Jerry pull a small phone out of his pocket. It was probably a burn-phone, nothing fancy or valuable enough to steal. "Nope, and I doubt we'll get anything. She didn't show up last week. Remind me why we're doing this again?"

"Because Bishop is a millionaire and he ain't doing anything with it. We take him out, the girl comes running. Girl comes running, we hand her over to Masque. Not that difficult. Here, take a look at this."

Oz yanked a small stack of folded papers from the inside of his coat, flattening them out across the table until Jerry grabbed them to peruse for himself. Clint couldn't get a decent look at whatever it was, not with his head turned toward Eleanor. He took a swig of the remnants of his coffee and turned his head to the side as if it went down the wrong pipe, coughing into his shoulder. He couldn't quite make out the pages, so he scooted to the edge of the booth and leaned over the side as if the coffee was harder to expel than he originally thought. The movement allowed him to at least get an idea of what the pages looked like.

Legal documents.

They looked like his divorce papers, actually, but Clint was sure most legal documents looked similar. Eleanor slid herself out of the booth and rubbed at Clint's back a few times until he held up his hand to wave her off. Jerry and Oz paused their discussion to look in their direction at the commotion taking place. Jerry only laughed at him. "You gonna make it, Dummy? Let him choke to death, girl, he's just taking up space."

If Eleanor gave them any kind of look or flipped them off, Clint couldn't tell. 

_Thanks_ , he signed, before remembered that she probably didn't know what he meant. He moved to write it down for her but she stopped him, taking the pen back. 

_I know what that one means._ Eleanor moved to write more, but another waiter called her name and waved her down.

"Hey El, we're getting busy. Come help me out with table 6."

"One sec," she called back, scribbling something quick on her ticket book. _Same time next week?_ Clint read over her hands, then held up his thumb again. He could smell the dabs of perfume she touched to the inside of her wrists that morning. Eleanor smiled and pat the back of his hand, managing to walk a few steps away only to stop and rush back. "Forgot my tickets."

If anything, Clint could see she was a good person. Probably very gullible or naive. He knew what those words meant, Coulson drilled those words into him only because they were spelled so weird and Clint used them often enough in conversation but couldn't pinpoint their exact definitions. She waved at him again, and disappeared into her own bubble that didn't involve Clint anymore. He looked down into his cup in the most pitiful attempt to look..pitiful. Heartsick and pitiful. It must have worked, because Jerry felt the need to comment. "Aww, look, his little girlfriend left him. All that hand waving shit probably scared her off."

"Are you done trying to aggravate that guy? He's not gonna hear you no matter how many times you do it."

"I know, that's what makes it fun. Wonder what he's trying to do with that girl; can dummies even get laid?"

Oz dropped his fork at that, clearly done with the conversation. "Alright, we aren't gonna hear from her. We'll have to try again next week. I'm getting sick of being stood up like this."

"I don't give a shit," Jerry shot back. "Think about the end result." The two began gathering their coats and fishing for some form of payment as Eleanor sped by to clear off another table. Jerry stopped her. "Here, here's for the food and so you and your boyfriend over there can go on a nice date. Take him to the circus or something, they let retards in there from what I hear and you can put him in one of the freak shows." Eleanor shoved past them and scoffed, her face flushed with rage that she had to keep bottled down. The phrase 'hulk out' was becoming more common in use and if anyone embodied that precipice that Bruce teetered at before the Big Guy exploded, Eleanor made a really good representation of that edge. She had the self-control of a saint, apparently.

Clint waited for just a few minutes after the goons left before digging for his own wallet, dropping a few bills on the table and heading out the side entrance. Whatever was about to happen that involved Masque, he had a proximal location. Kent Street was near the Pratt Institute (although Clint didn't know what kind of Institute that was; he initially thought it was for spoiled toddlers the first time he heard it), and following out some of the roads eventually lead to the Atlantic freeway. If they were in a getaway car and managed to make it to the freeway they could be gone in only a few moments and never seen again. He'd have to wander around that area and see if anything turned up related to Derek Bishop, Kate's dad and target of all of Barney's thieving fantasies, apparently.

Thinking about Kate's dad nearly made Clint double over; the name 'Eleanor' was significant. Kate's birthmother was named Eleanor. It was nothing more than a coincidence, but Kate Bishop was also a brat and would find a way to connect the two in some inane level and take it personally. Nope, Clint would have to keep Kate as far from _his_ Eleanor as possible. Man, that sounded weird.


	4. Sunday, December 7th (Late Evening)

Despite all his faults, and there were plenty of them, Barney Barton was actually a bit of a romantic. If anything, he knew up front what he wanted in a relationship and always wanted the other person to know as well, whether said relationship lasted forever or for twenty minutes. Unlike his ass of a little brother, Barney actually thought through how his decisions affected his relationships and the people involved.

So that's why he waited until Clint was gone and the boys were tucked in. André and Jeremiah didn't need another man in their life that hurt their mom; hell, Jeremiah was yet to actually meet his dad. André had met the man, but Simone never mentioned him and neither did André so Barney just assumed that he either didn't care or didn't remember enough about him. And right now he was still Uncle Barney, or Uncle Baba, and that suited him just fine. The boys needed someone they could trust, and if that meant staying their 'uncle' for a while then that's how it would be. 

But right now the boys were in bed, so Barney didn't have to keep his distance from Simone. After dinner, which Barney helped make by standing and leaning against the L-shaped counter where it met in the middle. He couldn't stand for very long but he was building the strength in his legs and managed to stand for fifteen minutes, long enough to get everything mixed and set up on the baking sheet. When he dropped back into his chair he was at a good height to slide the sheet into the oven, so dinner was a very smooth process tonight. Usually if he was cooking in Clint's apartment there weren't enough ingredients or not enough counter space. The current excuse was that Clint didn't have any washed pans and Barney couldn't reach the sink from his chair or stand long enough to do the dishes. And trying to get Clint to do any sort of chore was a traumatic experience.

After dinner he held Jeremiah on his lap and read the boys a story from a book while André leaned over the armrest of the couch, pointing out objects on the page that corresponded to the words Barney read. They never got far, only because André interrupted so often and Jeremiah fell asleep against his chest quickly enough. Simone had the kid trained as if he were a puppy; wait about an hour after dinner, warm up a bottle of milk and rock the kid for fifteen minutes and he was _out_. Barney sometimes wondered if Clint knew any of this stuff. It might have been useful to know a few years ago but not anymore.

When André yawned, Barney sent him back to his room and handed Jeremiah over to his mom. "Night, kid. Sleep tight."

"Don't let the bed bugs bite," came André's somewhat slurred response as he rubbed his eyes and shuffled back into the boys' room. With the couch finally empty, Barney had enough space to pull himself up and transfer onto the couch. Sitting in a wheelchair all day was really starting to fuck with his back; the faux-leather seat and back panel were extremely unforgiving. After adjusting his legs, which he was starting to be able to do without manually pulling at the legs of his pants, he sat back and relaxed for a bit until he heard Simone quietly shut the bedroom door. The dishes were cleaned and put away, and he turned off most of the unessential lights to help Jeremiah fall asleep faster.

Simone straddled Barney's lap, her knees on either side of his hips as she wrapped her arms around the back of his head. "You're really good with them, you know."

"Have you met my brother? He's just an adult version of a five year old."

She slapped at his shoulder and giggled. "You're so bad, you know Clint tries." Simone toyed the short red hairs on the back of Barney's neck, alternating between circling her thumb and massaging.

"Seriously, are we talking about the same person? Because I'm not sure we are," Barney grinned, his hands on her hips. He tugged her closer so she was sitting against his hips, leaning forward to breathe into her neck. "Can we not talk about my idiot brother right now? You're way more interesting than he is."

Simone rocked into his hips as he kissed beneath her earlobe. Barney loved the way her skin tasted and felt against his lips, the way her ass felt perfect against his hands, the way her palm just barely squeezed his neck harder when he nuzzled behind her ear. He didn't want to rush this part, not when her moans practically echoed into his chest. She pulled back for a moment and looked into his face, searching for a way to ask what was on her mind.

"Barney, can you...I mean, can you feel anything at all or-"

He furrowed his eyebrows for a moment and rubbed her back. Barney knew what she wanted to ask and he honestly did not know the answer only by virtue of not trying, at least with another person. Most of the time Barney was more worried about getting to the bathroom on time let alone getting off, but he could get hard. It only took him a much longer time to do so than before the night on the roof. He beat off a few times since but he was only successful twice in the handful of times he tried. Barney could feel the pressure and the roughness of his own hand, he wasn't _completely_ without sensation, but it almost felt like the nerves from his brain to his cock were stuck in traffic somewhere along his spine and that made him frustrated.

So he could theoretically have sex, or at least engage in sexual activity. But in terms of intercourse he had no idea. He was yet to have the opportunity, and Simone grinding into his pelvis was the furthest step they had achieved in their relationship. Barney kissed her first a few weeks ago; she was leaning next to him to retrieve something that rolled under his chair and just out of his reach. She was still leaning over when she set it on his lap, and after a few seconds that felt like forever he leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers. And that was all he did, at least that night. She was flustered but smiled at him and felt her cheeks grow warm, and since that night their physical contact slowly became more frequent from pecks on the cheek to quick kisses on her lips. But God-damn, did he want her. 

And for the moment, she was all his. "I can, it just--it takes a while. And I'm starting to be able to shift my hips but I don't think it's enough to, you know...please you."

She looked into his face, her hands cradling his jaw. "Barney Barton, you're a good person, you know that?" He shrugged, scoffing at the idea that he was a good person. Barney wasn't a good person. He was an asshole who occasionally did good things, and right now he wanted this to be one of those good things.

Barney reached up to take one of her hands in his own and leaned forward enough for her to understand his intent to close the gap between their lips. They began innocently enough, their lips just barely touching. But when she let go of his hands to tug at the collar of his button-down the urgency of his kiss increased exponentially. Her moans were practically scandalous when his tongue barely brushed against her bottom lip.

If he had more strength in his trunk he would lay her across the couch and stretch over her, his hips spreading her legs underneath him. But right now he could barely move his feet without monumental effort, so he was content to use his upper body strength to maneuver her hips against his own. Simone tugged at the top of his shirt, popping each button slowly, working her way down his chest. He wore an undershirt primarily because he felt cold much more easily now and the extra layers helped, but right now he seriously wished he hadn't. When she swerved her hips on her own he felt along her backside and dipped his hands into her pants, squeezing her ass enough to make her groan. If he died right now and her moan was the last thing he heard, Barney would die a happy man.

When he brought his hands back up he kept them under her shirt, inching towards the clasp of her bra. Barney stopped midway and mumbled into her mouth. "Can I-"

"God, yes," she breathed, leaning against his chest so he could reach more easily. Barney separated the clasp slowly, allowing Simone to pull her arms from the straps and tug the bra through the sleeves of her shirt. When she leaned forward again, her breasts against his chest, Barney focused his attention on her neck and kissing the soft spots along her jaw. When she arched against him he brought his hand around front and ghosted his thumb across her nipple, barely touching at all. She swatted at his chest again. "You jerk."

Barney chuckled against her neck. "I'm getting there," he said, kissing her clavicle then the middle of her chest. When she ground against him again his head bobbed with her chest, his lips never breaking contact. Finally he brought his hand back up to her breast and kneaded the soft flesh. Her hips gyrated faster as his mouth inched back up to hers, his tongue meeting hers. Fuck, did he want to lay her down and give himself to her. 

Simone began tugging at his undershirt, pulling much of the front from his pants before going for the button. He stopped and removed his hand from beneath his shirt to hold her wrist still momentarily. "I don't know if anything will happen," he mumbled, looking into her deep brown eyes. Her eyes might as well have been black as blown out as her pupils appeared. She looked down to where their hands met and rubbed her thumb against his. 

"It's alright, Barney," she whispered. "If nothing happens, it doesn't mean anything. I don't know exactly how you feel but I imagine it's frustrating. Let me take care of you, baby."

He hesitated for a moment before nodding and leaning back somewhat so she could pull the button apart. She dragged his fly down as he kissed her again, nipping at her lip and bringing his hand back up to her chest. When her slender fingers brushed against his cock, he smiled. Nothing happened immediately, but it felt nice for someone else (particularly a beautiful woman) to be doing this instead of his own rough palm. She maneuvered herself so that she had more room for her arm to move, slowly dragging her fingers across his shaft.

Barney wanted to cry when he felt his body finally respond. 

"That's it, baby," Simone breathed against his lips when he stopped to concentrate on how good her hand felt. He needed a moment to breathe as her hand fully encircled his dick, her thumb caressing his slit. "How does that feel?"

"Amazing," Barney groaned. He was half hard, and that was an achievement. "Simone, you know I want to, I'm really trying-"

"You hush, now. None of that." She kissed him again in earnest, slowly increasing the speed of her hand. It didn't help much but fuck, it felt good. Barney wanted to touch every part of her, taste every part of her and he could feel himself _almost_ get harder, he was scrambling towards that feeling.

Then someone knocked.

"Hey Simone? Have you seen Barney?" As soon as Clint's voice reverberated through he door Barney dropped his head into her shoulder. The feeling he was so desperate to achieve dissipated in an instant. Simone sadly chucked against the top of his head and pulled her hand back. He looked into her eyes, not even trying to hide the frustration he felt. She kissed him quickly and climbed from his lap to run into her bedroom while Barney zipped and buttoned up his pants. Simone ran back a few seconds later, tying the belt of her bright green bathrobe around her waist and pulling back the chain on her door. If Barney had a gun he would have shot the man standing in the doorway.

Clint stuffed his hands into his pockets. He felt embarrassed about his hands when he was around the neighbors, as if using his hands to communicate made them dirty somehow. "Is my brother around?"

Simone pulled the door open further to allow him inside. Clint shuffled in only to find a very angry Barney clenching his fists on the couch. "What is it?" 

Clint looked back and forth between them, trying to decipher the list of clues he was gathering in his mind. The disheveled shirt, Barney's flushed face, Simone's loose robe that shifted as her breasts swayed when she walked. He smirked at them both. "Why don't you two get a room?"

Barney cracked his knuckles to release some of the tension in them. "We _are_ in a room, and doing just fine until you showed up."

"You could at least have put a sock on the door or something!"

Simone slapped at Clint's shoulder in a playful manner but also so that he would look at her. "Yeah, we are _not_ informing the entire building of our activities that were meant to be private." Clint watched her lips form a smile when she finished speaking. "What's going on, honey?"

"I needed to talk to Barney about something, it's kind of important." Simone nodded and moved to push Barney's wheelchair closer to him so he could transfer from the couch. As many times as Barney did that, she never once asked if he needed help and Barney loved that about her. He could do it himself, even if it took a little longer.

Properly seated, he rolled himself backward until he had enough clearance to turn toward the door. "See you tomorrow?" Simone nodded, kissing Barney's cheek.

"Night, Clint," she said, somewhat louder than her typical volume. When Clint didn't respond, Barney jabbed him in his abdomen. 

"Ow, fuck, what-"

"She said 'goodnight,' asshole," Barney grunted, signing at the same time. He was still angry and it showed in his hands, the curt signs betraying his ability to hide his emotion.

"Oh, sorry. Goodnight, Simone. Tell the boys I said I'm sorry I missed them."

"I will, baby. Now get out, both of you." She clicked the door closed and Barney could hear the slide on her chain lock move into place. His head dropped and he wanted to throw his baby brother off of the balcony.

Barney took a deep breath and looked up. "What is so important? And it better be good."

Clint pulled his hands from his pockets and began speaking initially, but by the end of the sentence was signing. _The Drack-suits at the diner, I have a location. Or a general area, I guess._

_You scope out the place yet?_

__Clint rubbed the back of his head and scratched his scalp, a nervous tic he had ever since they were small. _Not yet. Masque, or whoever the middle-man is, didn't contact them today either._

Barney was becoming increasingly frustrated. _Why the hell are you even bothering with this if she ain't even contacting them? You sure you ain't just paranoid or something?_

 _I'm just trying to protect Kate,_ Clint whined, slumping his shoulders. _I don't want to see her hurt._

Barney slapped his hands over his face and dragged them downward in frustration. _You know what? Do whatever you want, I don't give a damn. Get yourself killed for all I care. Christ they should call you 'Hawkblock' instead of 'Hawkeye.'_ Barney spun his wheelchair around and continued signing to himself as if muttering under his breath, leaving Clint standing in the hallway scratching the back of his neck again and trying to figure out what 'Hawkblock' means.


	5. Sunday, December 14th

As the month progressed, the temperature in New York crashed and rarely climbed above freezing. Breathing outside at night felt like being internally stabbed in the lungs and even though Clint was used to cold he still hated it with ever fiber of his being. Growing up in Iowa meant single-digit temperatures during the day and negative numbers at night, many of which Clint spent outside in a barn huddled under a furnace used to keep the cows warmer at night. He often wondered if frostbite made the calluses in his fingers appear quicker than they should have, but he also practiced for an inordinate amount of time each day. One or the other, whatever.

Barney was still angry with him this morning, so Clint kept his distance. At least as much distance as he possibly could given the small size of his apartment. Barn was not as accurate as Clint and, barring the loss of a limb, he probably never would be. But Barney was also stronger in the way a Mack truck is stronger than a pick-up; both could still fuck up anything they hit but one could obliterate while the other cause a dent. He was always more solid than Clint, and where Clint had better accuracy, Barney brought down guys by virtue of punching until the guy stopped moving entirely. Even as kids Barney was always stockier and could throw a punch before he could do fractions. Sometimes Barney thought about what his life would be like if he became a boxer.

Clint walked to the diner as quickly as he could, hands stuffed into his pockets. There was no way to escape the bone-chilling cold that seeped through his coat so the best he could do was practically run the couple blocks over so he could get his hands around a cup of coffee. Surely by now his blood was equal parts coffee and blood, it wouldn't surprise him if nurses started replacing his IV's with the stuff. 

If he were on a mission, the cold would mean absolutely nothing to him. He worked in temperatures well-below freezing and on missions his body was already ramped up with adrenaline enough that he hardly noticed it. Outside of a mission, however, Clint was usually sluggish and slept most of the day so he could not fend off the winter weather as much as he would like. True, he was on a mission of sorts. But Coulson would probably shut this operation down if he heard about it. Coulson was SHIELD's greatest buzzkill, it was probably in his official job title.

Coulson was also the single greatest person to ever enter Clint's life, though. He was the only one who looked past all of Clint's stupidity and worked with him, despite all the frustration and anger that was involved. Truthfully Clint was more of a dick as a teenager than he is now. He was such a little shit to everybody. When the first shrink gave Clint an IQ test when he was 18 and he scored abysmally, Coulson was the one who ordered the shrink to use a different test. In the second test Clint did very well, but the first one was so word-heavy, words that Clint never heard in his lifetime. Who the hell even uses a work like _palliate_ in everyday conversation? A third test involved a lot of things Clint was supposed to learn at school, such as writing sentences and spelling out words. He could get through the math alright, he certainly did better with the math than with the writing or reading or spelling, but he was still extremely low. At the 10th percentile for reading, 5th for writing. Clint thought that meant 'at a 10th grade level' but he was way off. It meant that 3rd graders could read better than him. And he wrote like a kindergartner. 

The tests weren't fair, though. At least the first and the third ones weren't. The middle one he did really well, and he didn't have to say much at all. But the first one wanted him to define all these weird words that nobody ever used. And the third test had him name a lot of pictures and he could do the basic ones but towards the end he _knew_ what the object was, he just didn't have the word for it. He could describe what it did, but apparently that wasn't the answer the shrink was looking for.

Clint could remember the day Coulson sat him down in his office with a huge stack of papers and the little booklets he used for the tests. Coulson said it wasn't actually possible to fail this type of test but his face betrayed that idea. Clint later learned that what he looked at was called a _bell curve_ because it looked a little like a church bell. "Look at this box," Coulson said, pointing at a box on the first test with lines moving up and down. "This line in the middle is how most people would score if we gave everybody in America the test you took. On this end here, not many people would score because it's so high; this is your Tony Stark and Stephen Hawking type of people."

Coulson then pointed to the far left. "Not many people get scores over here either, because the scores are so low." Clint looked at where his little X's fell and wanted to vomit. They were all over to the left. "It's nothing you did wrong, Clint."

"I must've done something wrong, it says I'm retarded."

"No, it doesn't," Coulson snapped back immediately. "It doesn't mean anything like that. Look at this one." He pulled out the second test, the one that Clint liked the most because he didn't have to say much. "This one tested your IQ also, but it is not so dependent on knowing the English language. Look at your scores on this one and compare the two."

Coulson gave him a moment to study the two figures. "This one is way higher," Clint mumbled, pointing at the second test book.

"Exactly. Actually you scored very high on this one, and some of your individual scores were higher than many of our current agents." Coulson waited for Clint to grin. "The second test is used more often for deaf people, and since you are the first severely hard of hearing person we've ever tested our doctor didn't think to use this one. And think about how much you've been through, Clint. You hardly went to school at all, how could anyone expect you to score very high if you haven't had the education to do so? You're very smart, Clint. _Very_ smart. Just not in a conventional way, and it's nothing you did wrong." Coulson tucked the booklets away into the dictionary-sized file they already had on him. Most of the pages were probably juvie records. "Do you know what a learning disability is, Clint?"

Clint tried to remember all the way back to the short time he actually spent in school. "It's what the kids in the retard class have."

Coulson slammed his hand on his desk causing Clint to jump back defensively, afraid to be hit in some way. "Stop saying that. Now. Get that out of your head." He took a few deep breaths and unclenched his fist. "A learning disability means you just have trouble learning, that's all it is. How were you supposed to learn the material if you weren't hearing the material to begin with? You just have to learn things in a different way, and that's what we're going to work on starting tomorrow."

And off they went, six hours a day for nearly six months. Even weekends. Clint had 13 years of school to catch up on before his probationary period was up with SHIELD and they re-tested him. After six months of such intense work, Clint was reading at high school levels. There was not really a way to fix when the letters seemed to float, or when they looked backwards. But the shrink discovered that if he read the questions to Clint his comprehension skyrocketed. His writing was _still_ horrendous, though. It nearly kept him from continuing with SHIELD until Coulson argued for nearly three hours with Fury in front of the highest-ranked officers so Clint could stay. Coulson said Clint would be dead in less than a year if he were let go, and Clint believed him. Fury agreed to another six months probationary period as an agent, and when the time for report-writing came Coulson sat Clint down with a tape recorder and read the forms to him verbatim. Since then every report had been documented by audio, and Clint was perfectly fine with that. He had to sign his name both on the tape and the form that accompanied it, and he had to continue practicing to appease Fury, but Clint was allowed to stay. Just barely.

Clint owed his life to Phil Coulson.

But sometimes Coulson could be _annoying_. As Clint got older and Coulson expected more out of him, more responsibility and self-control, Coulson refused to bend. Little rules and regulations that had no consequence were strictly enforced. At first Coulson wasn't so bad; he understood when Clint stole cafeteria food to take back to his quarters because he was used to not eating for days on end and felt he had to stock up in some way. But eventually the "no food in quarters" hammer had to be brought down when Clint began squirreling it away in bizarre places around the room. Quarters have to be presentable at all times and no, you may not shove everything in the closet because you are a 24 year old adult man and should know better.

He learned just about everything from Coulson, especially anything involving espionage. Whether or not Clint was actually using his powers for good or evil at the moment was yet to be seen, although Coulson would probably say he was grossly abusing his espionage skills. Whatever, man. Clint was doing this to protect Kate, even though he wasn't entirely sure from what. 

In the diner he returned to his usual spot and plopped down into the booth, leaning against the back wall with his knee resting on the leather. More people were here than a typical Sunday, and Clint felt somewhat unnerved by this. With more people in the diner, the harder it was for him to hear individual conversations. The voices blended together and all managed to sound like gibberish of various loudness. And having to focus on Eleanor diverted his concentration that much more. She was wiping her hands on the bottom of her stiff apron when he folded a straw as tight as he could and flicked it at her, hitting the back of her hand. Even though she smiled when she saw him she still looked confused as we walked toward him, scribbling on small notepad that differed from her ticket book.

_How on Earth did you do that? You were sitting too far away!_

_lucky shot,_ he scribbled, stretching across the table. _what is this book for_

_For you, so we don't have to waste any more of my tickets._

__Clint pointed at himself incredulously. No one had ever gone that far to communicate with him, save for Barney. Some of his tenants who asked for signs did so only out of curiosity rather than a need to communicate with him. Eleanor bobbed her fist up and down along with her head, and Clint couldn't stop the smile that stretched across his face. He reached across the table to her hand and wrapped his own around hers, massaging her knuckles. She really was sweet, and her sweetness seemed genuine enough. And she was attractive, not in a supermodel way that most tourists expected to see wandering around New York, but in a way that made Clint want to set her up with Captain America. They would probably be perfect for each other.

The noise in the diner was noticeably increasing, and Clint had to reach up and turn the volume down on his hearing aids. He looked around the diner for the goons and had to shift and lean to see around the deluge of people that suddenly filled the space. Eleanor tapped his hand after a moment.

_It always gets busy when the weather gets colder. Luckily there are so many people those two jerks who bother you won't have a place to sit down. Maybe they will go somewhere else. If they don't come back again that would be fine with me._

Clint wanted to throw a chair across the room. The cold. The terrible weather and the cold and the snow was forcing people inside, and the diner was a quick stop for something warm to eat and feel comfortable before trekking back outside. Which meant that even if the two did show up, he wouldn't hear a fucking thing. 

He would need Barney for this. Barney could hear what they were saying, more so than Clint could at any rate. And the goons couldn't sign, they wouldn't know that Barney was feeding what they were saying to Clint. Damn it, Clint's plan was already screwing up. He gripped the handle of his coffee mug to keep his frustration in check. Eleanor pointed at the cup and used a very basic sign, usually one of the first signs babies used. She signed _more?_

Clint nodded and cracked his knuckles. This meant that he would have to go digging around by the docks near Kent Street which, even though he was an Avenger and SHIELD agent and the World's Greatest Marksman, was not a place to fuck with if you had the choice. And he couldn't take Barney, dragging his ass around would be too obvious. Maybe Nat would go with him, or Jess. Hell, even Coulson.

Eleanor was out of the booth and back in less than a minute, bringing with her a styrofoam cup as well as he carafe. _Wherever you go when you leave, the cup will help keep your hands warm,_ she wrote. Clint was about to write a response when she snatched the book back. 

_Would you want to maybe go see a movie sometime? The theater down the street plays a lot of foreign films so they have subtitles._

The word 'foreign' to Clint was...well, _foreign._ It was one of those odd words that didn't sound the way it looked and it took him forever to figure out how to spell it. He knew what it meant, though.

Underneath her delicate and curvy handwriting, Clint scrawled _sure_ in his clunky scratch handwriting. The smile on her face was infectious.

_Friday at 7, Opal Theater. Is that okay?_

_O.K.,_ Clint signed at her, wrapping his hands around the styrofoam cup. Eleanor was right, it really did make his hands feel better. She squeezed his fingers again before hauling herself out of the booth and announcing to whoever the lead waiter that she was off her break. 

He had to get home, he had to tell Barney his plans and just _pray_ that he either found where the goons were planning whatever it was they were planning or they showed up at the usual time next week. Barney would have to be with him if he came back to the diner, else all of this would be fucked over because of his ears. Kate would be hurt, and then he would blame himself, and then he would have to deal with Coulson. And then, and then, and then.


	6. Monday, December 15th

Of the Barton brothers, Barney was the one who would willingly wake up early. In the circus, the earlier you woke and got out of bed, the likelihood that you would be able to eat anything at all for breakfast that day was much higher. Since then Barney always got up fairly early, before noon at the absolute latest. Sometimes he wanted just a few hours to roll around the apartment in a vague attempt to clean up the place, and ever since the night on the roof he no longer had to be quiet about doing so. If he got up early enough he could say goodbye to André before he caught the bus for school and to Simone as she left to take Jeremiah to daycare. Save for the last few Sundays, Clint would sleep through most of the day. For the few weeks after the night on the roof, he went days without getting out of bed at all. 

Usually Lucky would wake up long enough for Barney to feed him and then trudge up the steps to the loft once again. At first Barney didn't like Lucky because he was always underfoot, but that was when he could actually walk. Now Lucky helped with little things Barney took for granted, such as flying down the steps when he heard someone at the door. If Clint was up in the loft and Barney was unable to answer the door for whatever reason, Lucky's excitement usually made Clint get up. "Fetch" was few and far between, but he was working on it with Lucky so that he would at least procure the newspaper and bring it back. If Barney threw the newspaper like he was playing a game then Lucky would bound back with it tucked in his jaws and ready for the next throw. If not, Lucky just stared at Barney as if Barney grew a second head.

He liked getting up early so he could do some of his physical therapy exercises without help. There were a few that he could do that didn't need another person involved, like the side-step or heel-to-toe which he could do sitting in the chair, but most of them needed someone else to at least be in the room. He stood at his spot at the island once and fell on the way back down when his ass bumped against the chair (he forgot to lock the breaks) and he missed entirely. Luckily a neighbor heard him hit the floor and knocked on the door, causing Lucky to wake up and race down the steps. Clint came down three minutes later rubbing his eyes and helped him maneuver back into the seat after blasting him for longer than Barney felt was necessary. Needless to say he felt like an infant. 

And he wished he could help Simone out with the boys more. Apart from holding Jeremiah on his lap while the kid held on to the bottle that was about all that he could do, and he never realized how much lumbar strength was needed to lift anything from the ground up. But he couldn't help André get into the top bunk of their bed, he couldn't even really tuck them in. If Jeremiah fell asleep on his lap, he couldn't push himself with one hand and hold onto the baby with the other to take him to the bed. Barney actually knew a lot about kids, but he didn't blame Simone for not leaving the boys with him for more than a few minutes at a time. André would want something to eat, usually cereal kept on the top of the refrigerator, or Jeremiah would need a diaper change and Barney couldn't pull himself up to the changing table without bringing the entire thing down. He was sure she appreciated being able to take a shower that lasted for more than three minutes and didn't involve a little boy banging on the door for one reason or another, but that was about all that Barney could handle.

When Clint called him to say that he was going to be an uncle, Barney went to a store and looked for a book about taking care of kids. He did so primarily because he knew Clint wouldn't, and Barney wanted to make damn sure that his nephew wouldn't get fucked over due to the incompetence of his own father. Barney was confident in Bobbi's ability to raise the kid, but as soon as that kid hit kindergarten he would already start outdoing Clint academically. Clint could barely feed himself let alone a tiny human being that needed care all hours of the day. So Barney vowed to be the best possible uncle the world has ever known.

The book switched back and forth between boy and girl each week, so Barney followed that routine. And the books always compared the kid to some type of food so each week he would change his nickname for the baby. First he was Kidney Bean, then she was Pea Pod, then he was Turnip.

Then she wasn't there.

Man, that phone call was rough. Clint couldn't actually do it so he punched in the number on a neighbor's phone (at the old apartment, the two bedroom) and the neighbor told him to come back as soon as possible. Barney practically ran the entirety of the way there, stopping when he saw Clint on the front steps of the apartment from across the street. Clint looked like he had been brought back from the dead unwillingly. 

Barney sat next to him on the porch for quite a while, long enough for the sun to hide behind some of the high-rise buildings across town. Clint never said a word, but when Barney massaged the back of Clint's neck with his broad hand Clint leaned into him a bit. Just for a little bit, Clint was Barney's baby brother again. Barney didn't mind. Not for something like this.

He helped them clear out what would have been the nursery. Bobbi couldn't do it and Barney wouldn't have wanted her to. Clint helped out a little bit, mostly to take down the larger furniture such as the crib, but that was about all he could handle. He tried to put on a brave face for Bobbi but Barney could see that Clint's 'brave' face was splintering by the end of the week. Strangely enough it wasn't finding any of the random baby items scattered around the apartment that broke Clint. It was a bell pepper.

Barney found him slumped against the cabinets holding a fucking bell pepper against his chest. Clint was never one to wail or scream or anything like that whenever he cried, but Barney had never actually seen Clint _weep_. Barney sat on the floor for hours letting his baby brother cry into his shirt, sometimes rocking a little bit. When Clint calmed down enough to move they went to the couch so he could lay down, but when Barney tried to take the pepper from him Clint grabbed his wrist so hard and fast for a moment Barney feared he fractured it.

"Don't," Clint croaked. His voice was so beyond broken it was little more than a choked whisper. 

"Clint, what do you even need it for?"

_"This is how big he was."_

That was what broke Barney's heart, the fact that Clint had picked up on the food size comparison and started actually using it. This was the moment Barney decided he could never have kids for fear of something like this happening, the moment he wondered if after all the bad shit that went down in their lives that this would finally make Clint snap. After a few weeks Clint went back to work and tried his best to believe the incident with the bell pepper never happened and Bobbi moved into separate apartments two months later.

When he could still walk, Barney always figured he would make a decent father if it ever happened. But after living through the nightmare that made up their childhood and nearly every single father-figure in their lives abandoning them in some way (some could argue Barney abandoned Clint at one point), Barney just couldn't justify ever bringing a kid into the world. He would never want to turn out like his father, and he loved his non-existent children too much to ever let that happen. So they would remain hypothetical; in Barney's musings they were safe and happy and looked more like their grandmother than their grandfather. 

Sometimes he wondered if he was getting too involved with André and Jeremiah, and he worried about leaving them without explanation. They didn't deserve something like that. André's dad was in prison and Jeremiah's was basically absent, so Barney didn't want to be another man in their lives (or Simone's) that abandoned them. He already abandoned too many people.

This morning he didn't expect Simone to actually be at home, but Jeremiah started running a fever sometime during the night and the daycare wouldn't take him for the day. He was about to roll down to her unit when Clint dragged his lazy ass down the steps, Lucky clacking his paws down each one. If there was any truth to the idea that dogs were reminiscent of their owners then Lucky would be the prime example. At the foot of the steps Lucky stretched his lean body and yawned while Clint shuffled to the coffee pot. 

Barney grabbed his attention before Clint could turn around and start measuring the grounds. _You get anything from the diner yesterday?_

_I needed to ask you about that, actually. It's getting too noisy for me to understand them, the place is becoming more crowded since it's turning cold. Would you wanna go on Sunday?_

_Not really because this is your gig and I sure as hell don't want to get mixed up in it-_ Barney clapped his mouth shut when the phone rang, rolling over to stretch for the receiver. "What?" Needless to say Barney wasn't the best at phone conversations.

Bobbi's voice crackled through. The phone was probably older than Barney by the looks of it, it never ceased to amaze him that it actually worked. "Well good morning to you, Barney-the-Grouch." He had to smile at the phone for that one. Of all of Clint's fuck-ups, Bobbi Morse was probably Clint's greatest. But they managed to stay friends somehow and it was probably the one single relationship Barney ever approved of.

"How you doing, doll?"

"Oh, fabulous. Wondering what my ex-husband was doing roaming around by the river yesterday. Did he make it home alright?"

Barney turned himself toward Clint, who stood by the coffee maker repeatedly signing _who?_ "Yeah, he's here. And awake somehow. You wanna talk to him?"

"No, don't worry about it," Bobbi replied. She lowered the phone for a moment and mumbled to another person nearby. "Coulson wanted to talk to him about something important but I figured I would try and get to him first before Coulson tears him a new one. Do you mind if we drop by?"

"Sure, I'm okay with it. Tear him multiple new ones if you wanna."

Bobbi's laugh always made Barney smile for some reason, it reminded him of their mom in the few moments Barney remembered of her being happy. "We'll be there in a few minutes, then." She didn't actually wait to say goodbye before hanging up.

Clint had finished mixing his coffee while Barney was on the phone, and Barney could hear the coffee maker groan to life to heat the water. If the apartment were ever to catch on fire, Clint would most likely not grab any of his expensive shit. Just the coffee maker. Maybe his bow case if he remembered. _Your previous wife and your present work husband are coming over._

_What for?_

_Fuck if I know. Bobbi said it's important to Coulson._

Clint snorted, digging for a relatively clean mug. _Coulson also thinks trading cards are important. Wonder what it's about. Oh hey, this Friday I'm going to see a movie so tell Simone I won't be at dinner that night._

_She's here, the baby got sick overnight. Running a fever but not a high one, Simone said it's probably just his molars coming in. You going with anybody?_

_Yeah, Eleanor. The waitress._

Barney scrunched his face together for a moment. _You're actually trying to nail the waitress? The one you think is innocent enough to marry Captain Fucking America?_

 _What? No, I'm not trying to sleep with her. She has to think I'm interested in her or I don't have a good enough excuse to go back to the diner every week. Besides, she asked me to go._ Clint sipped at his coffee slowly, enjoying the warmth that loosened up his fingers. He had a bad habit of popping them until his knuckles were sore. 

_Wait, you don't even_ like _her?_ Barney sat forward in his chair to reach for the carafe, pointing to a mug by the sink. Clint shrugged his shoulders.

_I mean, she's sweet and all but I'm not really interested in her. She's kind of just there as a wedge to get to those goons._

Barney froze, gripping the handle of the mug so he wouldn't throw the hot liquid in Clint's face. _You're fucking disgusting._

This wasn't the reaction Clint expected, so much so he forgot to sign. "Why?" Barney set the cup on the counter before he threw it against a wall.

_You're using her, Clint, and you don't even have a good reason why. Do you know how fucking sick that is?_

_I've had to do worse for SHIELD-_

_No, fuck you, this isn't SHIELD. This isn't SHIELD or the Avengers or any of your superhero bullshit. You're _using_ her; you're no better than any of the pimps who hang around at night, you're just whoring her out to yourself._

Clint practically slammed his mug on the counter. _I'm doing what I need to do to protect Kate-_

Barney inched closer to him, his knuckles white on the rims of his wheels. _This isn't about her! This is about some girl who's heart you're going to break for no good reason. What the hell were you planning on doing? Pretend to date her? Why do you feel the need to fuck up everyone's lives?_

Clint leaned in close to Barney's face, trying his best to intimidate his big brother. _At least I_ can _fuck someone. How does that even work between you and Simone? You can't fuck something soft-_

He didn't allow Clint to finish. Barney lunged at Clint and managed to grab hold of his neck, using Clint's instinctual retreat to throw him off balance and yank down as hard as he could. The _pop_ Barney heard when Clint's temple caught the edge of the counter sounded eerily like the same pop his head made against a wall when Clint was 3, when their dad threw him against it to stop him from crying. 

On the floor, Clint was trying his hardest to keep the room from spinning. His limbs disconnected from his brain and he saw Barney's fist swing back, watched as his knuckles grew tight. Clint tried to reach up and defend himself from the impending blow but he couldn't move his arms fast enough. Barney's fist hit his face like a freight train would hit a small car. The force made his head ricochet against the wooden floor, causing Clint's vision to turn white around the edges. As soon as his head came back up, Barney fist crashed into his face again. And again. And again, and again, and again, just wailing into him until his face was pulverized meat.

By the time the front door opened and Coulson, Bobbi, and Simone stood in the doorway, Barney looked like a villain in a slasher film. His fist, forearm, and shirt were splattered with thick blood, most of which was pouring out of Clint's nose. In every fight, every altercation Barney had been in his only rule for survival had been _hit them until they stay down._ And that worked growing up. But right now he was so blindingly angry he refused to stop. Even as Coulson and Bobbi wrapped their arms around him and dragged him away, he was still swinging at Clint's face. It wasn't until he saw Simone standing in the middle of the living room holding a sleeping Jeremiah did he stop, the horrified look on her face making his stomach flip on itself.

Coulson and Bobbi dragged him across the room to put some distance between Barney and Clint, shoving the wheelchair out of reach so Barney couldn't get to it quickly. He struggled against them, Clint's blood smearing across Coulson's fancy suit. Bobbi was lucky she wore a black t-shirt today. Coulson's suit was probably ruined. "Barney, Barney, stop it! Calm down! I've got you, sugar, calm down," Bobbi soothed into his ear, becoming more quiet as he calmed. She really did like Barney, despite how callous he could be at times. "Look at me, Barn, you're okay, just take a deep breath."

Coulson waited until Barney was inhaling deeply and exhaling deeply to ask anything. "What on Ear-"

"Hey guys, something's wrong."

Bobbi's head snapped around and she stood quickly, running over to where Simone stood next to Clint. Blood rivered down the side of his cheeks, both from his nostrils and from his mouth, creating tiny puddles beneath his head and staining his blond hair. His chest was spasming and his face began turning blue, which Bobbi found odd with the amount of blood scattered around his head. Just to be sure, she pressed against his neck to check that he still had a pulse and waited for him draw a breath that never came. "Coulson!"

She had Clint's head tilted back somewhat, forcing his jaw open. More blood spilled from his mouth, which enabled Bobbi to see the gash on the bottom of Clint's tongue that was practically pouring blood into the back of his throat. His face continued to lose its color even though his chest was fighting for air. Clint was literally drowning in blood.

"Help me get him on his side, he's choking," Bobbi ordered, holding the side of Clint's head so she could turn it carefully. Coulson grabbed Clint's shoulder and hip, slowly lifting his body so the blood in his mouth had an alternate direction to flow. She held his chest and pounded into his back, forcing much of the blood to splatter in front of his face. Coulson was about to find something to replace a mouth guard so one of them could do proper CPR if needed, but as soon as he turned around Clint vomited enough to clear his airway and he inhaled as though he hadn't breathed in a year. "He's still hemorrhaging, find something I can use to stop the bleeding."

Coulson was able to find a clean towel tucked into the back of the bathroom closet. He ran back into the living room and nearly tossed it at Bobbi, who worked open Clint's jaw and clamped the towel on his tongue as best she could. The blood flow slowed somewhat, although the towel immediately turned a thick black color. "Call it in Coulson, tell them Barton near-severed his lingual vein and will need transfusions. Get them down here ASAP, he can still bleed out." Coulson held the speed dial button for medical and barked orders without waiting for a confirmation. 

"They can be here in seven."

"It better be five or I'll personally carry him there," Bobbi snapped back. Clint's breathing was still hitched, and if he inhaled too strongly he also sucked a small bit of blood back into his throat causing him to cough and gag against the towel. "Try to breathe through your nose, Sport." She continued rubbing his back and mentally slapped herself after she noticed Clint's ears were empty. He wouldn't hear her and he was only conscious enough to remember to keep breathing. The towel obstructed some of his breathing, but his chest was no longer seizing to get air into his lungs. It would have to do for now.

When SHIELD medics clambered into the apartment, Bobbi let go and allowed them to replace the towel with packs of gauze. They stuffed enough gauze into his mouth and underneath his tongue that they were able to close his mouth around the gauze and avoid using their fingers to keep it in place. For a moment he struggled to breathe again until another medic suctioned his nose and opened the airway in his nostrils. "Grab the backboard and let's load him, we're ready for transport." Since Clint was already on his side they were able to roll him so he was lying down once again, coughing and sputtering with the movement. His cough still sounded wet. The medic team counted down, lifted the entire board and the entire operation practically ran out of the apartment, leaving Barney still sitting on the floor against a wall. Simone's gaze was transfixed on the large puddle of blood coagulating on the floor. Jeremiah's head jerked up once when Barney grunted, but he only turned his head to the other side and fell back asleep.

"Simone?"

She jumped as if taken out of a trance, looking back and forth at the blood on the floor and the near-dry blood staining Barney's front. Flecks were in his hair, freckled his face, and snaked around his forearm and knuckles. It was a scene from a horror film. 

When she regained enough coherence she moved to lay the baby on the couch, tucking him into the corner. Lucky peeked around the side of the couch and moved to sit in front of the baby; Lucky was always protective of Simone's human puppy. 

Simone kneeled next to Barney, afraid to touch him in case he snapped again. He could see the fear radiating from her eyes and he wanted to crawl to the nearest window and fall out of it. "Simone, I'm so sorry."

"Barney, just...what happened? What was wrong?"

He breathed as deeply as he could, staring at his useless legs. "He's a bad person, Simone. I was just tired of taking care of a bad person."

"And so you try to kill him?"

Barney's head snapped up and he looked into her eyes once again, trying to express how sincere he was when he said, "I wasn't trying to kill him. I swear that I wasn't." 

Simone found an old t-shirt that would fall apart if it went through another wash and went to the sink to wet it. She sat next to him once again and rubbed his face with the damp shirt, wiping away the blood splatters. "He's still mourning, Barn-"

"Yeah? Well, when is it my turn?" She stopped and twisted the shirt to a cleaner spot as Barney threw his hands in the air. "It's been six months, Simone. I've been taking care of him for six months making sure every fucking day that he doesn't sit in the bathtub and eat a bullet. Well hell, what's six months on top of 30 odd years or so."

She moved on to the thickest concentrations of blood around his knuckles and forearms, holding the cool shirt to the inside of his arm. Barney still felt hot from the adrenaline. "It isn't fair, Simone."

"What isn't it fair, baby?"

"I've taken care of him since he was a toddler. When there wasn't enough food for both of us, he was the one who ate. _Always._ I took so many beatings for him because he had to run his stupid mouth. And I took care of him in the circus, but he was the one to get famous and become a superhero and save the fucking world while I asked for change over by the library most nights.

"And then all that shit on the roof happened and now I'm stuck in that fucking thing while he gets to run around and do whatever the flying fuck he wants. He was partially deaf through most of our lives, that SHIELD thing fixed a lot of it. He should be fucking used to it by now. And it's been six months of constant worrying about him moping around and making sure he eats or fucking bathes himself. _When is it my turn?_ "

Simone dried off her own hands and sat next to him, her back against the wall and curled up into his side. "I know your brother isn't easy to deal with, baby. But you love him, and I know you do. And you've always had to be strong, that's why he looks up to you so much. But you're right, you should be allowed to grieve."

He pulled his arm back to wrap around her shoulders, kissing the top of her forehead. "You're the best person to happen to me in a long time, you know that? You and the kids."

She laid her head against his shoulder. "My babies love you, and I'm sure part of what has kept you from going off sooner was because of them. You want them to have some stability, you want Clint to have some stability, but inside you must be feeling anything but that." Due to the awkward angle she wasn't able to hug him properly, so she laid her arm across his stomach. "If you ever need to let go of all that, whenever you need to, just let me know, okay? Please?"

Lucky suddenly jumped up from his spot in front of the couch, licking and nosing at Jeremiah who was shifting on the couch and looking around the room. Simone tucked the bloody towel behind her so Jeremiah wouldn't see it as he rolled himself to the edge of the couch and hobbled across the room. "Baba sit? Mommy?" He stretched his arms in front of him in the universal toddler gesture for 'hold me.' Barney reached out and pulled him closer so he could properly position Jeremiah on his lap.

"It's okay, buddy. Baba's okay."


	7. Monday, December 15th (Evening)

Depending on the day, Phil Coulson would say that he loved his job and simultaneously hated it. He loved being able to help people in dire situations and to see them safe and unharmed. He loved the mysteries of the universe that were uncovered daily that he kept secret from the general public, and the knowledge that he held some of that information in his mind made him feel a sense of pride.

He did not like having to separate Cain and Abel.

Coulson knew a lot about Charles Bernard 'Barney' Barton and Clinton Francis Barton, some things neither of them knew about each other. Hell, Coulson had arrested both of them individually at one point or another. And Clint surely put Coulson's title of 'handler' to good use. Even though Clint was in his early 30s, if he was not on a mission he had the maturity of a 13 year old boy. How someone could go from that level of immaturity to lethal in the span of ten minutes made Coulson wonder if it was Clint's superpower.

To be fair, Clint had his moments on missions where he needed to be reminded to focus, but this usually happened before or after the mission and rarely in the middle of the mission proper. Coulson checked in on Clint's life outside missions but unless he was doing something to actively hurt himself, like the weeks following the incident on the roof, Coulson rarely intervened. He considered petitioning Fury for involuntary institutionalization for some time, and Clint didn't know it (because he never used it) but his access to weaponry was somewhat limited during that time as well. Coulson would never remove his bow, studies with veterans experiencing PTSD had shown that removing their weapons often exacerbated the symptoms. For about six weeks Clint starved himself into delirium and some days Coulson went to the apartment, Clint didn't recognize him at first. At least Coulson could convince him to keep drinking water, that alone probably kept him alive. 

He had the opportunity to talk with Barney on some days, and they always had a justifiably strained relationship. Barney trusted Coulson about as much as Coulson believed he would ever become a reincarnation of Thor, which is to say not at all. Most of their conversations consisted of what Clint was doing up in the loft since Barney had no way of getting up there. Four weeks into one of Coulson's visits, Barney trusted Coulson enough to ask him for help getting outside for just a few minutes of New York's version of fresh air. It took a lot of effort to ask such a thing, and Barney gained a few points of respect in his favor for doing so; instead of just being bitter about someone else helping him do something so basic, Barney actually explained why he was afraid to ask. Having someone "take him outside" humiliated him since people did the same with Lucky. When they came back inside, they discussed Barney's physical therapy routines, some of which he could do on his own and others he needed help completing. Clint dragged himself out of bed in the middle of their discussion to use the bathroom which was a monumental accomplishment compared to the first week in which he practically needed to be carried. Coulson asking if Clint wanted to help was the pivotal moment in which Clint's mood began shifting.

Physical therapy became a mission, of sorts. They were small steps to getting him out of bed and keeping him out, so Coulson asked if Barney would mind scheduling the different exercises throughout the day to force Clint out of bed more than once. The first week he would miss an 'appointment' or two but by the end of the week Clint would come down the steps before the designated time, which lead to Clint mindlessly snacking on whatever he could find for a few minutes, which lead to the return of his ridiculous appetite that put Olympic swimmers to shame. The night Barney put the boys to bed with a story (Jeremiah calls it the "Clobber Time Story") and Clint appeared in their doorway, Simone began inviting him over for dinner to get him out of his unit. A few weeks of that and she asked him to wait with André for the bus outside, Kate forced him to take Lucky on walks, and Coulson eventually took him grocery shopping. Each activity slowly built his tolerance for being around the general public once again. But above all Clint felt like someone _needed_ him. As a bit of a reward, Bobbi took him to the diner that he now frequented every Sunday.

Coulson knew some information about the diner that he wanted to talk with Clint about, which provided the reason for going to the apartment. Simone, who Coulson recognized but previously never spoke to, was standing outside the apartment with her eyebrows furrowed and her ear almost pressed against the door and patting a sleeping boy's back. She recognized Bobbi, even though they had only exchanged pleasantries prior to that day. Coulson asked her if anything was wrong.

"I heard something heavy fall, I was listening to see if it was Barney. He's fallen a few times before and I'm worried about him." Simone shifted the little boy so he sat most of his weight on her hip. "The door's locked, and I tried knocking but no one will answer; I know at least one of them is in there."

He rapped on the door a few times while Bobbi fished for her key. When Coulson put his ear to the door and listened to the erratic _thump_ noise emanating from the other side his mind went in two entirely different directions, one entirely obscene and the other reasonable. Since the roof incident Coulson worried that there was lasting neurological damage despite what the MRIs and x-rays and PET scans suggested and that Clint was having some type of seizure. He had one before after a particularly nasty blow to the back of his head during a battle against the villain of the week, and in reality compared to the list of medical emergencies Clint experienced that rivaled the length of Apple's terms of agreement, a seizure was probably one of the more minor ailments.

Bobbi unlocked the door and Coulson nudged it open with his foot, and for just a split second he only saw Clint from the neck up on the other side of the counter. His eyes were rolled back into his head, his face becoming scarlet, he was shaking somewhat, and Coulson feared his prediction was correct. Then Barney's fist slammed into Clint's face and the _clack_ of his fist against bone made the sound he heard from outside the door make much more sense. Neither Coulson nor Bobbi wasted another second, running over to him and grabbing Barney's arms around his elbows. Barney managed to throw his fist hard enough that it built momentum, and when it escaped from Coulson's grasp the inertia made the last punch he was able to throw exponentially more brutal. Coulson figured that final punch was when Clint bit through the lingual vein. 

Even without much use of his legs, Barney Barton was essentially built like a tank. The only other way Coulson could describe him was _solid_. Barney threw his weight around and squirmed and swung at air to the point Coulson wanted to call in other agents to keep him down, but seeing Simone cradling the little boy to her chest in absolute terror made him stop. Bobbi diverted his attention and forced him to breathe slowly to calm down, in and out, in and out, until Simone interrupted and brought their attention back to Clint and the blood driveling down the sides of his face originating from his mouth. Coulson never actually stopped to see if Barney stabbed him or did anything that could cause internal bleeding. He never figured Barney could be that lethal with only his fists.

Bobbi knew more medically than Coulson did, as his knowledge did not go much farther than what was required to patch people up in the field. When she stated Clint was choking Coulson immediately thought that he had lost a tooth which was stuck in his throat and never once considered that someone could actually choke on blood. That type of thing only belonged in movies and book, it wasn't something that just happened to people. He thanked whatever God, demigod, and spiritual entity listening that Bobbi knew what she was doing because Coulson sure as hell didn't. Coulson followed her orders and even though they were the same rank at SHIELD he would readily admit when he didn't know what he was doing. The most he could do was help her roll him onto his side into a rescue position and wait for orders. 

The amount of blood that poured out of Clint's mouth kept Coulson from being able to take a nap all day. He'd seen people shot in the gut, saw arteries sliced in half, even watched a man executed in the most horrific of ways and the amount of blood this morning rivaled each of those. The bleeding slowed considerably on the way to the emergency room but Clint was still unconscious and pale. The medics were able to hook him up to one bag of blood on the way and that brought some color back to his face. Once they arrived the surgery to repair the vein and the gash that nearly cut his tongue in half took less than an hour. X-rays on his skull were back in only a few minutes (the amount of pull SHIELD had made everything so much smoother). Barney managed to fracture Clint's left cheekbone and the bone near his sinus cavity behind his nose, neither of which would require plating. The rest of the injuries were largely superficial apart from a concussion.

Out of surgery the doctors tried to lay Clint prone but since his mouth and tongue were so swollen the position reduced his airway. A 45-degree angle allowed him to breathe easier even though as he regained consciousness his head flopped forward a few times, which Bobbi found somewhat funny. Typically Clint was an absolute _nightmare_ to deal with after surgery but since he was knocked out for such a short amount of time he only tried to sit up once or twice. He tried reaching for Bobbi when he was coherent enough to recognize her although he was so loopy the attempt was half-hearted. She held his hand regardless and that appeared to satisfy him until he relaxed again and fell asleep.

Coulson remained in his seat filling out the start to a mountain of paperwork that he knew would ensue. Unfortunately he had to debrief Bobbi and based on her history with Clint seeing them together almost felt like he was witnessing a private moment. Eventually he cleared his throat and pulled his chair closer, Bobbi continuing to run her fingers through his hair. She avoided the red-violet skin that made up most of the left half of his face, his left eye swollen to the point that when he woke up he would most likely not be able to open it.

"He was going to look so much like his daddy," she muttered before Coulson even began. "He had Clint's eyes, his chin...thank God he had my nose." 

Coulson knew who she meant but never asked for more information about what happened, he always waited for her to volunteer. The most he knew about their unborn child up to now was that they were going to name him Nicholas Phillip and when he was informed of the baby's passing Coulson truly mourned. Not because someone was no longer going to be named after him (which Coulson thought was a terrible idea) but because of the hurt he saw in the baby's parents. The rippling effect of such a loss was extensive. Now Clint would usually shrug his shoulders and say that he never got a chance to meet him, effectively ending the conversation.

After a few moments Bobbi pat his hair back down and looked across the bed. "Alright, Phil, what do you have for me?"

"I just need to know what physical contact you made in case there are any injuries that need to be investigated because of that contact."

Bobbi grinned at him and chuckled. "Oh Phil, you always knew how to sweet talk a girl. All I did was check his airway and back strikes. I didn't want him to sit up in case his neck was broken, I couldn't tell at the time. And if it asks, rescue breathing would've been dangerous for either of us with the amount of blood in his mouth and chest compressions would've caused him to bleed out quicker." It was all fairly standard, and if Barton had any sort of bruising on his back there would be no need for any kind of investigation. 

Coulson scribbled down her statement and passed the form over for her to sign. Clint must have felt the clipboard against his thigh as he opened his eyes again and tried to focus on the offending object. Bobbi looked up from the form when he slowly tapped his finger across her wrist. "Hi, Sport, how you feelin'?" Of course he made no indication that he could understand her, but when she leaned closer to his face at least he tried to focus on her mouth. The two fingers he was able to control at the moment, his index fingers, began twirling in a rhythmic pattern, which Bobbi didn't recognize. Coulson stretched forward to see. _Happen._

"He wants to know what happened," Coulson said, pulling his chair a little closer to see Clint's other hand.

"I don't know how to tell him," Bobbi replied, a sad smile clouding her features. She pointed across the bed to Coulson, who waved his hand so Clint could find him and focus more easily. Clint attempted to smile at him but could only manage a lopsided sleepy grin.

_Barney attacked you, you almost bit through your tongue._

Clint squinted and Coulson was unsure if he understood until he balled his fists and shook them towards each other. "Is he cold?" Bobbi rubbed at his forearm even though he did not feel particularly cool.

 _Fight._ "He said they were fighting." 

"Of course they were," she snapped, her facial features immediately becoming dark. She let go of his hand and shoved her chair backward. "That's all they do is try and kill each other."

Coulson didn't comment, although he admittedly agreed with her somewhat. _You can go home tomorrow, you weren't breathing for about two minutes before Bobbi cleared your airway so the doctor's want to be sure there aren't any more difficulties._

Clint scrunched his face together as best he could, obviously not happy with the stay. The movement made him notice that his mouth felt dry and sore, and the clicking noise he made as he tried to relieve the dry feeling only made his entire face ache. Bobbi stretched to the side of the bed and grabbed a cup of lukewarm water from the side table and a small hand towel from above the bed. She dipped the towel in the water and held it to Clint's lips until he worked his jaw open, groaning as he did so. 

"I know, Sport, but you'll choke again if you drink anything right now, just bite down on it as best you can," she explained, enunciating as best she could. After a few moments of confusion in which Clint looked absolutely betrayed for some reason, he closed his jaw so Bobbi could squeeze just enough of the water to coat the inside of his mouth. Clint nodded when he felt better, grimacing at the blood spots that peppered the fabric. Coulson tapped his arm and waited until Clint dropped his head to the other side; the amount of time he took to do so was decreasing, which was a good sign.

 _Soft diet for a few days, nothing salty or acidic. In a few hours you can eat a little bit; this is probably one of the few times you'll be able to get away with eating ice cream and popsicles for two days._ Clint's chest hitched in a sad attempt to laugh.

After a moment, Clint shook his hand again. _B._

_Barney? He's fine, I called a few hours ago and the woman from down the hall is with him. What on Earth were you two even fighting over?_

Clint waved his hand to tell Coulson off. He really didn't feel like trying to explain right now, not when the room was still lopsided. A nurse came in to check on the scratchy stitches that snaked down the bottom of his tongue, Clint protesting the entire time. Thankfully he didn't try to bite her, only managing to flip her off when she let go and walked out of the room. Bobbi squeezed his hand again to help him relax.

She really did love him. Even though they were divorced and their marriage was a complete disaster, she truly loved him and still did. He was the father of her child and despite all the dumb things he managed to get himself into he would've been a good father. Maybe not the best, but after hearing the stories about Harold Barton she knew there was no way Clint would allow himself to become like his own father. But they just didn't seem to work, as much as they tried to force it. Most people said she was too smart for him, or that he was too stupid for her, or that he was too irresponsible and reckless and every other negative trait imaginable. Bobbi would agree with many of them, but she also knew Clint tried his absolute hardest to make everything work out. He was right there for every appointment, asked the doctors eight billion questions about Baby Nick since he tried to read the books and became impatient with them. Clint even opened a new checking account so they could start saving for Baby Nick's tuition down the line. Nothing about him suggested he wouldn't care.

Whether or not he still loved her, she could never guess. Barton tended to hold grudges against people that hurt him personally and often Bobbi feared that grudge would never go away. He never blamed her for what happened, at least not outwardly. And their divorce was not exactly conventional, as she often dropped by the apartment just to hang out for a bit and they even had sex once but both agreed that was not a good idea to do agin. They worked better together as unified individuals rather than a team. So they stayed friends, it wasn't like caring for each other was a switch they could turn on and off. 

He felt tired again after trying to push away the nurse; he never actually managed to push her with any force but she did swat his hands away. Bobbi pulled the blankets further up his chest and nodded so he would sit back again and close his eyes. Hopefully he would get some uninterrupted rest until the remainder of the pain medication wore off and he was lucid enough to realize how awful he felt.

When his eyes closed Bobbi resumed running her fingers through his hair until his breathing became deep and even. Coulson tucked his form into a manilla folder and tossed it onto the side table. "Think we should tell him about the waitress?"

Bobby shook her head. "Not yet."


	8. Tuesday, December 16th [A Short Interlude]

Clint woke the next day feeling as though he was hit by a fighter jet. The entire left side of his face weighed about ten pounds more than the right and any movement he attempted was an immediate _nope._ The bottom of his tongue itched against his jaw and the one time he accidentally scratched the line of stitches against his teeth he nearly cried from the ache. At least this morning he was able to sit up and slurp at yogurt without too much difficulty, although with only one eye his depth perception was a little wonky. 

Coulson dropped by with his hearing aids while he was still asleep and left a note saying that Simone would come bust him out as soon as she left work. The attorney's office she worked in was only a few blocks away and usually she took a train home and walked the remaining blocks but Coulson gave her enough money for a cab to bring Clint home and avoid the stares and comments about his face. Since she was typically home before André got off the bus at 4:30 he would stay with Barney in Clint's apartment until she was home. André rarely complained since he usually just watched cartoons and idly scratched at Lucky who would crawl up on the couch next to him for some much-needed attention, as if no one paid attention to him all day. Once Clint was home she could go back the other way and pick up Jeremiah. A busy day taking care of the four important men in her life.

By the time she arrived Clint was planning an escape route out the window using a complicated pulley system that involved the motor at the base of the bed. He hated hospitals when he could hear and even more when he couldn't hear, because now he had difficulty figuring out how to get the subtitles on the television which was too small anyway and why the hell did they need to make eight million types of TV sets with different types of programming anyway? So he slept as much as he could until he tried to roll over onto his left side and started the agony all over again. The skin around his eye was puffy and warm, and he thought he heard a doctor talk about cutting a small slit at the bottom to drain some of the excess blood but nothing ever resulted from that conversation. When she knocked on the door and flicked the room lights once Clint was attempting to eat a bowl of soup without making too much of a mess. "Come in," he called, dropping the spoon into the bowl.

"Oh, honey, look at you," Simone cooed, just barely touching the side of his face as if her fingers were fog. "He really did a number on you, didn't he?"

"Yeah, it sure feels like it. You doing okay? I'm sorry you had to see all of that."

She tossed her small purse onto the visitor chair that Coulson occupied most of the night and dropped herself onto the side of the bed next to his feet. "I talked with Barney quite a bit last night." Clint tried not to grit his teeth. "He didn't tell me what you said that made him snap, though."

That was good of him. If Simone knew what Clint said about her, he'd never forgive himself. Clint never meant to hurt her in any way, but whenever he was upset the first thing he did was dig at someone's insecurities. And he used a backhoe this time. 

"I said some things I'm not proud of, let's go with that," Clint mumbled. Sometimes when he was not paying attention or was just being lazy he slurred his speech a bit. One of the neighbors told him it sounded like he was trying to smash all of his words together and they piled up on one another. 

"Do you know why he's upset, Clint? Not just about what you said, be more broad." He shook his head and thumbed at the thin blanket pull up to his waist. "He hasn't really left the apartment in months, has he? Well, he misses being able to roam like he did beforehand. And when he has to ask if someone would help him outside it humiliates him."

"Hue meditate?"

Simon grinned and shook her head, enunciating a bit more slowly. "Humiliates. It hurts him when he has to ask to go outside."

Clint nodded, unsure what exactly to say. "What else did he tell you?"

"Oh, some stuff that should remain between us. But being independent is the biggest issue for him, it seems. Can you see why that is?"

He felt like she was lecturing him as if he were one of her boys and he just broke a window. "What does he want me to do about it?"

She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. "I don't know, baby. He needs something, though, or this is going to happen again."

Clint sat back against the bed and scratched behind his ear, bits of dry blood flaking onto his shoulder. She was right, Barney deserved more than Clint was giving him especially after the weeks Barney took care of him. He needed to be able to move on his own and go outside whenever he wanted, not when it was convenient for someone else to help cart him up and down the steps. Clint owed Barney that much.

As he finished his soup he twirled the straw of his water cup between his fingers, rolling it up and back along the table. There was paperwork to fill out before he could leave, but Clint was still waiting for the nurse to bring his discharge forms. Simone reached into her purse and rooted for her cellphone to call Barney and let him know they were leaving soon. When she hit the button to end the call, she waved at Clint to get his attention. The distraction sent his straw careening off the back of the table and landing on the lump of his foot, rolling back towards him at an angle. 

The idea hit him so hard he froze with his spoon midair. _That_ was what Barney needed. Something to help him navigate the apartment that would allow him to come and go as he pleased. At the moment Clint would do whatever he needed to make that possible if it meant Barney forgiving him somewhat for being such an obnoxious asshole over the past few months. 

He reached out his hand for her cellphone, mentally typing out the numbers before hitting the 'dial' button and holding it out in front of him. Another push of a button and the call was transferred to speakerphone, which only helped somewhat with the clarity of the call. Hearing aids and cell phones were having a love-hate relationship at the moment. 

_Whoever this is better have a good reason for having my number because I can remember exactly every person I have ever given it to and I can guarantee you, you weren't one of them._ Clint looked over at Simone for confirmation to begin speaking, waiting for her to nod.

"Stark, it's Clint. I need you to build me a ramp."


	9. Wednesday, December 17th

Construction in New York is a common occurrence, particularly around the area of Bedstuy. A lot of people, Barney included, set their alarms by what time construction crews began in the morning. He'd become so acclimated to the sound that when he first heard the jackhammer this morning at first he did not notice how close it was to the apartment building. It was only after Clint burst through the front door to dig for some type of paperwork that Barney sat up and listened.

The swelling in Clint's face was slowly improving, although he still had little functional use of his left eye at the moment. The doctor at the hospital told Simone before they left that it may need two or three days before he could open his eyelids fully, although there was no damage to the eye itself. Bruises around Clint's cheek and jaw were lighter in color but had not reached the yellowing phase of healing yet. Only a few neighbors saw his face between the time he arrived home from the hospital and this morning, and each of their reactions was some form of shock and disgust that they made little effort to try and hide. André remained hesitant around Clint for the remainder of the night and Jeremiah practically wailed, tears streaming down his face until Simone took both boys back to her unit. If Barney felt any sort of remorse for nearly beating Clint's face in, he certainly did not show it.

Clint, however, felt increasingly guilty the closer the cab was to the apartment. He hesitated getting out, thinking about going to the Avengers' Mansion for the night but at the same time the phone call to Stark galvanized his energy somewhat, to the point that he only managed to doze for about three hours overnight. Tony decided that five in the morning was the perfect time to begin working on their project and buzzed Clint's Avenger card (phone? Clint could never figure it out) at some ungodly hour until he dragged himself out of bed and down the steps. Lucky tried to sniff at Tony's crotch until Clint pulled the dog backwards and shut the door behind him.

When Barney sat up and maneuvered himself into the chair he began the routine of getting dressed. Before the night on the roof he could dress himself in about three minutes if he were being lazy but now he usually needed 15 minutes or more. Instead of just stepping into pants he now had to bunch the legs up and set them on the floor in-between his footrests, drag his leg around until he somehow managed to get his foot into the ankle opening, and then do the same with the other leg. He would pull them up as far as they could go, roll over to his counter spot if he wasn't already there, stand and pull them up the rest of the way. Shirts he could do somewhat quicker, although now since his movement was reduced he wore shirts in layers. Instead of shoes with a tongue he bought loafers that his feet could slip in and out of easily. Today he opted for sweatpants, the same pants that Clint somehow managed to break the internal belt. They were Barney's to begin with anyway.

He opened the apartment door and inched into the hallway to see what Clint was doing at the back entrance before he knew Barney was there. Lucky tagged along behind the right wheel, sniffing at the floor for any food André may have dropped on his way out to meet the bus. Clint and Tony stood at the end of the hall flipping through paperwork and scribbling notes on diagrams. With the door open the hallway felt like an icebox, and for a moment Barney considered rolling back inside and hunting for his coat. Since he rarely went outside as the temperature lowered he often forgot where he placed his heavier jacket. 

"Okay, about 230 pounds plus the chair which is 40," Stark was muttering to himself. "I'll just program it for anything over 250 pounds. Sound good to you?"

Clint shook his head. "Nope."

"Why the hell not? As soon as I set the program up and the crew lays the cement back down we'll be done."

"Nothing sounds good to me." From down the hall Barney could see Clint's right cheek pull back into cheesy grin. Stark popped him in the shoulder and shook his papers, pointing to a diagram.

"You're an ass, you know that? Anyway look here-" He tapped a few keys on a tablet, dragging items across the screen and typing in numbers. When he looked up again Stark noticed Barney waiting expectantly down the hallway, prompting Clint to turn around also. He grinned sheepishly at Barney and scratched the back of his head as if they were kids again and Clint accidentally broke something of Barney's. 

_It's not even 8 in the morning, what the fuck are you guys doing?_ Barney rubbed at the side of his face and yawned as if that was evidence he needed to prove how early Clint and Stark were awake. 

_We've been working on something._ Clint's knuckles were red from the cold and his signs were clunky due to frozen joints. Tony's head bounced back and forth as if he were watching a tennis match.

"I'm missing something," Tony whined. "Are you guys talking about me? That's not even fair-"

"Is it ready yet?" Clint's interruption caused Tony to stutter somewhat. "Just to try it."

"Uh-I mean, yeah, it could use a test run. Probably a good idea before they lay the cement."

Clint nodded and stalked down the hallway as if he were on a mission, grabbing the handles on the back of the wheelchair and shoving Barney forward. As he moved closer to the back entrance door he picked up speed, moving faster and faster towards the cement steps. Three-quarts of the length of the hallway and Barney began to panic, trying to grip the metal rims of the chair to slow down his speed.

"What the hell are you doing, Clint, stop! Let go, motherfucker, let me-" And then he stopped. 

Sitting on the edge of the doorframe Barney watched as the steps, which were no longer cement, unfolded and extended to create an angled ramp. The metallic plates lightly _clacked_ together until they were aligned so conspicuously Barney could barely tell where one panel began and another ended. He was absolutely dumbfounded. 

Clint nudged the back of the chair until it reached the edge and rolled smoothly downwards and slow enough that Barney could control the speed. At the bottom he gripped one rim to make a U-turn and stopped at the base, his eyes ricocheting between Clint and the ramp. Clint waved at him to back up a few feet, and as soon as Barney's wheels were no longer touching the exposed metal square the panels shifted once again and aligned themselves back into steps. 

With each step Clint bounced his leg somewhat to test its integrity while Stark chattered away. "Yes, yes, you can thank me any time now. Alright, here's the lowdown-that black panel? Weight sensor. I based it off the passenger-seat weight sensors in a car. It's set to detect your weight plus the chair--which we really need to get the other one, now that I'm thinking of it--so when you roll over it the steps will extend. The panels have smaller weight sensors so they won't start folding up on you before you're up or down completely. You can manually override it if you need to but you can't be on either sensor for that to work." Tony looked at the distance between the last step and the bottom weight sensor. "That angle okay for you? Because tough shit, everything is already installed. I can increase the speed that they unfold though. Yeah, I'm gonna do that..." He stepped away from Barney and Clint to chatter at himself and work through programming, tapping at numbers and figures on his small tablet.

Barney only nodded, as his brain was yet to regain speech functioning. Eventually Clint waved his hand to grab his attention. _Do you like it?_

For a moment Barney had trouble thinking of which sign he wanted to use. _That's...it's...it's incredible._

_I talked with Simone yesterday, and I didn't realize how _stuck_ you've been feeling. But I get it now. And I'm sorry, I'm an ass-_

_Well, yeah._

_Hey, I'm apologizing here. I know I'm an asshole sometimes, and that's really the end of it, I'm just an asshole. But you've taken care of me for a long time. A _very_ long time, mostly when I didn't deserve it. But I wanted to at least try to make some of it up to you. Simone told me how you feel about asking for help getting outside, and I don't want you to ever feel that way again, okay?_

Clint grinned as best he could; the cold was making his face ache considerably. Barney leaned forward a bit and touched the top of his head to Clint's stomach, wrapping his arm around as much of Clint's waist as possible. Any type of hug was awkward from a sitting position, and it was the best Barney could do. Clint bent at his wait somewhat and tugged at Barney's shoulder until Tony tapped him to get his attention.

"Birdboy, the other chair is here."

"Other chair?" Barney furrowed his eyebrows and looked at Tony, still pouring over his tablet. Behind him a delivery man of some type stepped forward with a folded-up wheelchair, pulling the wheels apart as he set it on the ground. Tony absent-mindedly reached into his back pocket and pulled whatever amount of currency was there, giving it to the delivery man who looked equally as shocked as Barney.

The second chair was smaller than Barney's current hospital-issued chair. The angles were smoother and less rigid, and instead of the footrests sticking out obnoxiously in front a small plastic footrest angled from beneath the seat with a strap to keep his legs tucked back. Instead of tall and unforgiving leather the seat and back panel were cushioned, and rather than armrests that Barney had to reach over (which wore him out after a while) the armrests on the new chair merely curled over the wheel without touching it. Clint pulled it closer so Barney could touch the frame and make sure he wasn't actually dreaming.

"You wanna try it?" Clint set the new chair next to the old and locked the wheels, holding his hand out. Barney pulled his legs off the footrest and folded them up then gripped Clint's hand, scooting himself to the edge. "Ready? One, two, three, up." At his full height, Barney was only about an inch taller than Clint so it was easy for him to hold onto Clint's shoulders as he concentrated on moving his leg two steps to the left. Two steps to the left with the left leg, two steps with the right, and back one. That's all he needed to do. "I gotcha, Bubby, take your time."

It'd been a long time since Barney heard that nickname. When they were much younger and Clint began talking he would call his big brother the closest approximation he was able to produce, "Barbie," until Barney began correcting him to "Bubby." Now that they were adults he rarely used it but Barney actually liked the nickname. It was something they shared, one of the few positives in their life growing up together. No one else called him Bubby, and he wouldn't allow anyone else to do so anyway.

He managed to shuffle his feet one at a time until he was aligned with the new chair, dropping his weight slowly and shifting backwards until he was able to sit casually. He took a deep breath and bent over to pull his legs onto the footrest, pulling the strap across to keep his legs tucked underneath him. So much frustration in Barney's life as of recently came from being unable to maneuver the old chair without crashing the footrests into something. He managed to knock over just about everything at this point, accidentally breaking a few picture frames in Simone's apartment. With his legs pulled back he figured if he didn't run into something with his knees then the rest of the chair would be clear. 

Barney rocked back and forth to get a feel for the wheels which offered little resistance, unlike the old chair that probably needed new axle bearings. Pushing the new chair was much easier and the frame felt so much lighter. _What's it made out of? The metal feels hollow._

_Carbon. It makes the frame lighter so it weighs less overall. How's it feel?_

He was still rocking back and forth, spinning halfway to the right and to the left, testing the brakes and wriggling until he was comfortable, grinning all the while. The back panel was tall enough that he could relax against it comfortably but low enough that it wouldn't cause his shoulders agony after rolling around all day. Even the small handlebars on the back panel frame were encased in foam.

Having heard the commotion of Clint pretending to shove Barney down the steps, Simone stood in the doorway and inspected the new staircase. There were more steps than the concrete set-up to allow for a smoother angle that was not too fast, and Simone stepped down and back up a few times to get a feel for the new steps. At the bottom she smiled at Barney and leaned down to kiss his cheek. He grabbed her hands and kissed them.

"Barney Barton, your hands are frozen solid and you aren't even wearing a coat! Get inside, right now. Go, you can play outside when you're dressed properly," she scolded, rubbing her hands together to warm his. This temperature was actually _warm_ compared to the middle of winter in Iowa. But he complied anyway, rolling back over the exposed weight sensor and waiting for the steps to extend once again. The entire process took less than 15 seconds, and since the new chair was a lighter frame he rolled back up the ramp as if he'd been using them his entire life. Clint and Simone followed behind him, leaving Tony outside to finalize the programing on the manual override panel hidden beneath the handrail. The three stood in the middle of the hall and waited for Tony to finish five minutes later.

"Okay, I think I've effectively stalled long enough to miss the meetings I was scheduled for. Whatever, I'm pretty sure I'll live. Anyway, kids, it's been fun and all and my cold, mechanical heart is three sizes bigger, but I need to head over to the Tower. Sorry we could only get the ramp installed on the back," Tony said, tucking his phone into his front pocket. "Building permits and all that, and as lengthy as the ramp needs to be you'd roll out into the street. Not good for my image, you know. 'Stark ramp kills circus carnie.' Anyway, the cement crew will be out tomorrow to cover over the bottom sensor so you might not be able to use the ramp for a day or two until it dries. Let me know if it does anything weird, which it shouldn't because I built it."

Before Tony was able to turn around, Barney stuck his hand out. "Thanks, Tony, I really mean it. Thank you." Tony shook his hand quickly and slapped Clint's shoulder as he walked out the door to a waiting car. Clint walked towards his apartment and mumbled.

"Okay, I'm gonna go back to bed. Only wake me up if New York is sinking into the ocean. Or when _Dog Cops_ comes on, I missed yesterday's episode." Simone chuckled at him, running her fingers through Barney's thick rust-colored hair. "Night, guys. Morning, whatever."


	10. Friday, December 19th

By Friday, Clint was able to open open his left eye with little difficulty although the surrounding skin was still red and puffy. The ache became increasingly dull unless he rolled over in his sleep or Lucky licked his face. Skin around his cheek and jaw was now becoming black surrounded by dry yellow patches. As he walked the street, Barney rolling quickly beside him, people barely tried to hide their staring.

With the new chair Barney was able to match Clint's stride in terms of speed, at least when people noticed him and moved out of the way. Sitting Barney was as tall as an average twelve year old so few people paid attention to his presence and nearly crashed into him. After the third time Barney clamped his fingers on the rims to stop so he would not run over a person's foot he stopped caring and simply told people to fuck off. Clint grinned through the entire walk. 

Signing from two different heights while also moving proved to be a challenge initially, and at first they would start and stop until they reached their destination but talking about anything added time to their trip. Eventually they discovered that if Barney pushed the left wheel, Clint could push the right handlebar with his left hand and sign with his right. He wasn't naturally right handed, ambidexterity came only after he began learning trick shots with his bow, but Barney was also stronger in his left arm so pushing that wheel moved them along quickly without tiring him. Clarity and comprehension also plummeted when they signed with only one hand, however. And ever the case when they signed out in public, people stared.

They would part ways at the theater, Clint going with Eleanor to see a foreign film while Barney and Simone went to dinner a few blocks away. Amy, the neighbor on the second floor in the A unit, and her girlfriend offered to watch the boys for a few hours even though Jeremiah was not her biggest fan and her pink hair obviously confused him. André was equally unsure of Amy at first but as soon as he saw her tattoos she might as well have hung the moon. And since she occasionally watched one of her siblings' kids she had plenty of games and books for the boys' ages. 

Wind snaked through the taller buildings and seeped into bone, and the knuckles on each of their fingers became red and stiff. Much of the remainder of the walk was spent in silence. Clint tucked his hands into his sleeves to push the chair so Barney could do the same. When they were younger and Harold chased them out of the house, either by swinging busted glass bottles at them or picking up Clint and throwing him out the back door, they would huddle together either under the furnace or laying against one of the sleeping cows that was kept warm to be slaughtered the next day. As small as the two were growing up the cows never seemed to mind. In the circus the owner, Mr. Carson, typically avoided cold weather since that meant a huge drop in attendance rates. 

At the theater they tucked themselves into the foyer to at least escape the wind but able to see who walked by while waiting for either Simone or Eleanor. _Your face is going to scare her away,_ Barney grinned, tugging his hat further down to cover his earlobes. Clint shoved one of the handlebars so Barney would crash into the wall. He rolled back around and continued to grin. _I meant even if I didn't beat the shit out of you, your face would still scare her away._

_Smartass._

_Yup. Hey, is that her?_

Clint looked around the foyer to see whomever Barney was pointing. Eleanor stood in front of the ticket booth looking in the opposite direction around the sidewalk, scanning the faces of people who walked past her. Clint jogged over to her and tapped her shoulder. "Oh, hi! I didn't even bother to look behind me, sorry. Oh my gosh, what happened? Are you alright?" Eleanor reached out to touch Clint's face but stopped just short of actually doing so. Clint shook his head and pointed in Barney's direction. "Uh-okay, I don't know who that is, though."

He tugged her along by two of her fingers back to Barney who was busy trying to get himself comfortably warm. Since he sat all day he was unable to make himself warm up as easily as beforehand. When he looked up again he waved. "Hi, Eleanor?"

"Yes, that's me."

"Hey there, I'm Barney. I'm his older brother," he said with his hand outstretched. Eleanor shook his hand while looking back and forth between them.

"Nice to meet you. I didn't expect anyone else to be with us though-"

"Yeah I'm not-no, I'm waiting for someone else. So you're the one my brother keeps talking about?"

Eleanor noticeably blushed which added to the warmth of her face cast by the overhead bulbs. She smiled at Clint and bit her lip, tucking a random strand of hair back into her fluffy deep blue hat. "I guess so. What does he say about me? Good things, right?"

"Mostly that you refill coffee cups."

Clint kicked at Barney's footrest, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. _Jerk._

 _Asshole. Now move, there's Simone._

Clint turned around when he felt Simone's hand on his shoulder. "Hi boys, you doing okay? Sorry for keeping you waiting."

"Not a problem. Simone, this is Eleanor; Eleanor, Simone." The two waved at each other and quickly ran out of things to say. Barney eventually wrapped his hand around Simone's elbow to get her attention. "You hungry? Because I'm hungry and as funny as it would be to watch my baby brother awkwardly slog through a date I'm also freezing and would like to be inside somewhere."

Clint scoffed at him. "Go away."

Simone pulled her coat tighter around her body and leaned forward to kiss Clint's cheek, the side that wasn't covered in black and yellow skin. "You guys have fun, alright? It was nice meeting you."

They were about to depart until Barney grabbed Clint's arm. _Be good to her._

_I promise._

\---------------//\\\\------------------

Inside the theater Clint kept his hands on his knees, trying his best not to scratch at his face. The skin surrounding his bruises was becoming dry and flakey but if he scratched his face at all he threatened tearing them open, not to mention the constant ache. Eleanor sat on his "good" side but frequently looked at the other. After a few minutes of awkward silence she reached into her purse for the little notebook they used to write back and forth at the diner. Clint noticed she was yet to tear any of the old pages out. _So what happened to your face? Does it hurt?_

Clint nodded and held out his hands for the notebook and pencil. _you shuld see the other guy_

She giggled at him, taking the pencil from his hand but leaving the notebook on his knee. _Did you get into a fight?_ Clint nodded again and mimed being punched multiple times. _Who did it?_

_bar fight_

That was an outright lie be Eleanor did not need to know the true reason his face looked like beef stew. She reached down into her purse once again for something else to write with so they did not have to pass her pencil back and forth. _It's silly but for a moment I was afraid those two men from the diner beat you up or something._

Clint openly laughed, the first time Eleanor heard any variation of his voice. "No," he chirped, then began writing again. _i have a big mouth_

As soon as he finished writing, the lights dimmed and they settled back into the seats. There was a moment of shuffling while she put her notebook back and set it into the seat next to her underneath her coat. Clint was yet to remove his toboggan but he did not have anywhere else to put it without it getting lost in the dark seats. The film, a foreign film that Clint had seen a long time ago, rolled onto the screen and cast moving shadows across their faces. He had difficulty reading the subtitles quickly enough but he remembered most of what happened the first time he saw the film (something about a little boy and a tank that his dad promises him) so he was able to figure out the gist of what was happening. He help onto a small square box of popcorn for them both to share.

Occasionally their hands would brush in the box, to which she would blush and he would shake the box towards her. When the box ran out he sat back once again and threw his arm around the back of the chair, pulling her closer when she leaned into him. Eleanor smelled like mocha and cinnamon which Clint decided was on his list of favorite scents as of late. She rested her arm against his knee but was careful not to get too personal.

When the film's credits began to roll, Clint rubbed his hand up and down her arm. She didn't immediately respond, and he looked down at her face to see if she was alright. Eleanor's eyes were closed, her mouth hanging open slightly, inhaling and exhaling deeply. She was asleep.

Clint shook her shoulder gently until she popped her head up and looked around in a daze. When she became aware of her surroundings she looked up at Clint and smiled somewhat ruefully. "Sorry, I didn't mean to doze on you." Clint shrugged his shoulders and continued rubbing her arms as she looked into his face. Their noses nearly touched and he hesitated before closing the small gap between them and brushing her lips with his own. Eleanor smiled as soon as their lips touched, her face becoming flush. What possessed him to do that, he could never guess or even remember, and quickly stopped caring when she sat up so he could kiss her properly. However, he pulled back when she sat up.

His ears were bright red as the lights came up contrasting sharply with his purple hearing aids. Eleanor tucked her hair behind her ear, gathering her coat and her hat into her arms. "Uh, I um..." _I had real thank you time._

He screwed his face up for a moment, trying to figure her meaning. "Good time?" Eleanor nodded, and Clint showed her which sign she did incorrectly. She giggled at him. "Oh, sorry." _i had a really good time._

 _Can I walk you home?_ Clint wasn't sure how much she understood. "Home?" He held his hand out to hold hers in an effort to add clarity. Eleanor wrapped her fingers around his, and they left the theater.  
\--------------//\\\\-----------------

Neither Simone nor Barney had eaten at a place that involved silverware wrapped in cloth in a very long time. So long, in fact, that Barney felt extremely underdressed. Simone, however, left him momentarily speechless when she removed her coat. She wore a deep pine green dress that hugged her figure without being exceptionally revealing. When she noticed him staring, she straightened the dress around her waist. "Not bad for a mom of two boys, huh?"

Barney smiled at her and shook his head. "Just...wow. You look amazing." A waiter removed one of the chairs from the table and disappeared with it into the kitchen, allowing Barney to edge himself up to the table. He returned a few seconds later holding a bottle of wine, which Barney waved off. "Sorry, man, I shouldn't; I'm driving tonight." Simone grinned at him and held her wine glass up. "What do you think the boys are doing?"

She thanked the waiter and sipped at her wine slowly. "André is probably finding every excuse not to get ready for bed, 'Miah is probably already asleep. I told Amy she might have them overnight so André was in sleep-over mode when I left. His plan is to stay up all night and eat an entire tub of ice cream just to see if he can but I bet he won't even make it to 11 at the latest."

"Yup, I've taught the kid well. And I may have told him I'd give him five dollars if he ate the entire tub," Barney mumbled, thumbing at the fork sticking out of his napkin. "Amy is going to have one hyper boy on her hands if she doesn't already. My evil plot is working."

"Barney Barton, you did _not_ convince my son to overload on sugar just to mess with a neighbor, did you?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, that is information I am unable to share at the present moment. I swore myself to secrecy with André and that's an oath among men that I am forbidden to break but don't be surprised if you receive a phone call about him throwing up strawberry ice cream in the near future."

Simone dropped her head behind her hands in mock exasperation. "Well, in that case, you can be the one to do the laundry tomorrow morning when he ruins the bedsheets." The waiter returned with Barney's water and menus, rattling off a list of food that Barney had no idea what they involved or their ingredients. He looked at Simone for some type of clue and she shrugged her shoulders.

Barney slapped the menu shut. "Yeah, I don't know what any of that is. Just throw some food at the menu and whatever it hits, bring us that." The waiter took back both menus and dashed off once again. "I really hope one of those is just a fancy word for 'cheeseburger' in some language I've never heard before."

"The only word I recognized was 'soup' but no telling what's in it. You know, I'm really glad we were able to come out tonight, I think we both just needed a break from everybody."

He reached across the table to massage the back of her hand. "Honestly I didn't care where we went. We could've stayed at the apartment, as long as I got some time with you to myself."

"You keep that up and you'll have more than 'some' time with me." Simone searched for some type of imaginary fuzz on the table to hide her blush.

"That's kind of the goal," Barney fired back without missing a beat. He would have said more, but the waiter returned with two bowls of soup and set them on the table. "Well, hell, why didn't you just say it was tomato?"

\---/\\---

By the time they finished eating the temperature outside the restaurant plummeted and Barney did not want Simone to walk all the way back to the apartment in so thin a dress. Instead they called a cab, holding hands the entirety of the way back while the Ugandan driver argued with his employer until they stopped in front of the building. As soon as he had Barney's wheelchair unfolded and Barney was safely transferred from the back seat he paid the man as quickly as possible and rolled to the back of the building. 

Watching the ramp unfold from the steps, or fold back, still blew his mind and on the first day he was able to use it after the cement was dry enough he went up and down it a few times in a row. André sat on his lap once, squealing the entire way down as they picked up speed. He was perfectly safe, Barney could control the speed of the descent and they honestly did not go very fast, but Simone preferred that Jeremiah _not_ try out the human roller coaster that was Barney. Clint even tried it once with the old chair, which they kept for emergencies.

Inside the apartment, Simone shut the door and began flipping on light switches, removing outer layers as she went. By the time she had all but the boys' room lit, she was down to only her dress. Barney had managed to get his heavy coat off and made a vague attempt to throw it at the hook next to the door. It stuck for about three seconds then dropped to the floor. "Want me to get it?" He nodded at her and backed up.

With the coats put away, she sat on his lap side-saddle and folded her hands behind his neck. "You look really handsome, you know," she whispered, brushing back a few hairs on his forehead that managed to fall out of place. He touched his forehead to hers, rubbing her lower back, and after a moment she ran her fingers through the hairs on his neck and tilted his head to kiss him deeply.

She felt so warm under his broad hands despite the thinness of her dress and the more urgent her kiss became the hotter she felt. Barney pulled her closer to his hips, alternating between massaging the outside of her thigh and gently squeezing her ass. He wanted to touch her elsewhere, but the dress constricted her legs somewhat. When he felt her tongue graze his bottom lip his hands moved to her hip, creeping up her side and minutely brushing the side of her breast. Simone stopped and sat up for just a moment, nodding toward the couch then standing up so Barney could roll himself next to it. He fought with trying to figure out how to transfer from the new chair to her couch, since he was yet to do so and was used to using the large clunky hospital chair. As soon as he was situated in the middle of the couch, Simone turned around and sat in front of him. "Unzip me?"

He tugged on the zipper slowly, drawing it down her back until it dipped almost to her ass. She stood and faced him once again, shrugging the dress from her shoulders and allowing it to fall to the floor leaving her only in solid black panties. Barney felt like a 14 year old boy once again, unable to keep his eyes off her figure. Simone was not supermodel thin or anything of the sort but with the lamp from the side table casting gold across her dark skin she might as well have modeled in some capacity. He was absolutely flabbergasted. 

When Barney didn't say anything (he was sure his brain was shorting out), Simone straddled his hips again similar to the previous week before they were rudely interrupted. "You can touch me," she grinned, arching her back somewhat so her breasts were most prominent. Barney sat up and nuzzled her breast, gently taking her nipple into his mouth. She responded by gyrating her hips against his. He continued focusing on her chest, swirling his tongue around one nipple and thumbing the other. Her moan went straight to his gut.

Her breath quickened, as did his, as she took one of his hands in her own and guided it down between her legs. If her upper body was warm, the heat between her legs outdid the rest of her body immensely. He massaged her slowly, refusing to speed up even though her hips were slowly rocking to increase the friction on her clit. Barney looked up to kiss her again as if she were made of oxygen, swirling his fingers in circles. Simone panted against his cheek, encouraging him to explore further. "Touch me, please," she whispered, biting his earlobe. Combined with her quickening breath in his ear, the lower half of his body slowly began to respond as if it were just waking up from being asleep. He ran his fingers down her stomach and dipped below her panties, slowly running his finger across her warm pussy. She quietly gasped when his fingertip brushed along her clit, her legs tightening around his hips. As she kissed him further, her hands framing his face, his fingers moved quicker and her hips sped up equally until she was practically fucking herself against his hand. "Oh, God," she exhaled. The tension between her thighs was winding as she barreled towards orgasm but she was unable to bring herself over the edge. "More, please, more." 

As she rocked against his hand, Barney crooked his finger so that his fingertip hinted at being inside her cunt. She slowed long enough for him to insert his middle finger, his palm rubbing against her clit as he drew his finger in and out. Simone's breath hitched and he could feel her moan that began in her chest and ended in his ear. "Right there, I'm so close, baby, you're gonna make me come."

He held her still so he could quickly palm her clit, drawing deep breathy moans from her. "That's right-" He didn't even finish the sentence before her hips faltered and her pussy tightened around his fingers. She moaned into his mouth and held his hand in place while she rode out the last of her orgasm, breathing heavily through her nose. When she finally slowed he stroked her slowly once or twice before removing his hand completely. She stood slowly to remove her panties, then spread his knees somewhat and kneeled between them. "Scoot forward a little, let me take care of you, baby."

Barney needed a moment to wriggle himself further down the couch, unbuttoning his pants as he went. "Hopefully this time my idiot brother doesn't decide to come home," he grunted, pushing himself off the couch as best he could so she could slide his pants past his hips. When he sat down again, Simone tugged the front of his pants toward his knees so she could draw her hand across his half-hard cock. He dropped his head back on the couch and focused only on the smooth strokes of her hand as she jerked him off slowly. "I'm sorry, I'm really trying-"

"Stop that, right now. Enough of that kind of talk," Simone snapped back at him. "Just relax and breathe, that's all you have to do." He closed his eyes and dropped his head back once again, letting his body take over without his brain's interference. He felt his gut tense as the tip of her tongue licked the head of his cock. 

She drew him into her mouth slowly, her hand wrapped around the base of his shaft. When she was as far down as she could go her tongue dragged along the underside, right underneath the head. "Fuck," he groaned, feeling himself relax while his body finally responded and he hardened completely. Simone hummed in approval against his shaft as she lowered her mouth as far as possible then dragging her tongue along the bottom of his shaft on the way up. She did this a number of times, intermittently swirling her tongue around the tip or stroking the base, then bobbing up and down quickly until his chest was practically heaving. He doubt that he was able to even produce any pre-come but fuck, that felt amazing. And when she raised her head completely the _pop_ sound that emanated from her mouth was shameful.

Simone stood and straddled his hips once again, leaning forward enough to guide him to her entrance. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she sank down onto his shaft until he completely bottomed out. For a moment they simply smiled at each other, her forehead against his, hardly moving at all. It'd been so long since either of them had sex the ache she felt was welcome. She kissed him quickly, and since she was somewhat leaning over him she held on to the back of the couch and rocked her hips to test his responsiveness. Barney held on to her hips and barely lifted her then lowered her once again, stretching his neck upward to take one of her nipples in his mouth again. Simone hummed low in her throat as she increased the speed in her hips, leaning forward and rocking to create friction against her clit. When Barney lifted her once again so that he was barely inside her, the _oh_ he drew from her came from the base of her spine. 

"You like this? Does this work for you?"

"Don't stop," she breathed, rocking hard enough that the couch squeaked with each thrust. Since Barney had very little control of his hips as of yet she was doing most of the work to get herself off once again but once he thumbed her clit as she rocked she found herself close very quickly. "Keep touching me, baby, that's it." By now Barney was unable to form coherent sentences, he was so concentrated on making her come once again. And he was pretty sure the neighbors to either side of her could probably hear her moans. 

He felt her tighten around his cock but it wasn't until she practically shouted upwards that she finally came and slumped down onto his chest, breathing heavily against his throat. A thin sheen of sweat coated her forehead and when she raised herself off him his body felt light and cool. She moved only to kneel in front of him once again and since his cock was still slick she was able to work her hand up and down his shaft quickly, thumbing the underside of the head once again. After a few quick strokes Barney felt his abs tighten. "Keep doing that, whatever it is you're doing, keep doing it."

His brain was practically crawling towards the first orgasm he'd had in months. Slowly, but God damn it, he was going to brick at some point. And Simone seemed to know what she was doing, the lower half of his body was growing tighter and his breath quickened. The coil at the base of his spine was winding the faster she jerked her wrist and he gripped the edge of the couch. When the coil became too tight he felt everything relax all at once, his balls tightening and a small amount of come leaking from the tip. It wasn't much, probably the same amount most guys did in pre-come, but Barney felt so amazingly relaxed for the first time in months he sank back into the couch with his eyes closed to memorize the feeling. Simone tugged his boxers over his softening cock and up to his hips, dropping herself onto the couch next to him and leaning against his chest.

"How you feeling, baby?"

"Incredible," he said, smiling down at her. "How are you?"

"Exhausted. But I will have you know, you're the first man who has ever let me finish before him."

Barney chuckled, her head bouncing with his chest. "I'm going to go ahead and say that was my intent so we both feel good about ourselves." He rested his chin against the top of her head for a moment. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"I don't know," he mumbled. "Just being you, I guess." 

"Uh oh, if you keep that up people will start to think you're not the cold heartless bastard you try to make yourself out to be. Now, I'm extremely tired and I'm pretty sure Amy is going to drop the boys off early tomorrow, so let's just go to bed. It'll be better than sleeping on Clint's ugly old couch."


	11. Sunday, December 21st

With so few days left until Christmas, the ability to walk anywhere in New York without getting trampled underfoot was quickly diminishing and Barney considered attaching some type of bell or flashing light to the side of his wheelchair so people would stop crashing into him. Most people who walked quickly were in a rush and didn't notice him, while the zombies who walked extremely slowly did not notice him because their faces were practically glued to their cellphones. With the amount business that New York conducted during its peak shopping days, Barney honestly wouldn't mind allowing half of them to just keep walking out into traffic. Might clear up the sidewalk, if anything.

Clint's face attracted less attention, and now he was able to generate facial expressions without difficulty. The black bruises were slowly becoming pinkish-yellow, and some no longer hurt. However the fractures in his cheek and near his sinus cavity were taking their sweet time healing, so chewing and turning over in bed was difficult at best. Lucky still attempted to nose and lick at his face, Clint guess in an effort to help his face heal in some capacity, but he usually hissed at the dog and nudged him away. 

This morning the foot traffic was not _as_ bad as it could be, but after noon the traffic would no longer be navigable for someone who was only about four feet tall while sitting. One businessman nearly lost an entire cup of hot coffee down Barney's front; luckily the lid was secured and Clint managed to jerk the chair backwards before it tagged Barney's knee and crashed to the ground, its contents exploding all over the sidewalk. When the businessman complained, Barney rolled over the puddle and grinned at him. It was one of those expensive coffees, too. 

At a crosswalk while waiting for the light to change, Barney turned himself so the platform of his footrest tapped against Clint's shin. _You know, I was thinking about something,_ Barney mused. _You're doing an awful lot of work for a girl who you haven't seen in weeks. How do you know these guys of yours haven't already got ahold of Kate?_

Clint scratched at the base of his chin, dragging his knuckles across the stubble he had been unable to shave as of late. _If something happened to her, I would know about it. Besides, its not that easy to get ahold of us anyway._

_If we're unreachable how the fuck would you know if she were hurt? God, you're a dumbass._

_I meant one of the kids would get ahold of me. That Billy kid can teleport, he's done it before when they needed me._

Barney cracked his knuckles and blew into his hands. _I'm pretty sure using the kids to do your dirty work counts as some kind of child labor violation._

Clint was going to say something snarky right back but the crosswalk light changed and they were practically shoved forward. For the remaining blocks the two kept to themselves until they were in the parking lot of the diner. Barney stopped to check out the exterior. _This place better be good or I will seriously start doubting your ex-wife's taste. I'll be straight up offended._

 _Then sit out here and become a homeless popsicle, I don't care. You'd look good with frostbite._ The white ball of Clint's red Santa Claus hat bounced against the back of his neck as he about-faced and headed for the ramp leading up to the diner's main entrance. Barney hated that stupid hat, it made Clint look more ridiculous than he typically did and as much as André liked it last year, this year he thought it looked stupid. Jeremiah took every opportunity to yank it off the top of Clint's head and Lucky usually tried to snap at the fluffy cotton ball. In public the look was even more ridiculous and his hat did not match at all with his tunic-style blue coat.

Inside the diner the heat from the air conditioning and the amount of bodies packed into a small space blasted them both as soon as Clint pulled the door open. Barney looked around the interior of the diner and nodded, glancing at the old pictures that lined the walls in no discernible pattern. The yellowed walls that at one point were white but had since faded due to cigarette smoke and age now were littered with various newspaper clippings and autographs from random celebrities that visited at one point or another. Clint could not recognize many of them, just the older famous people like Muhammed Ali and one of the presidents, though he could not remember the name. He could recognize important people, but since he grew up unable to hear much vicarious information as well as the inability to read for so long Clint never learned many of their names. Hell, he didn't know his own name or Barney's name for a long time, at least not properly. He could recognize them when he saw them on paper but he did not have much sense as to how they sounded at first. 

Eleanor came out from the kitchen as the two looked around for a place to sit (or "park," as Barney would say). She pointed to the back corner that was littered with empty plates and glassware. "Hey guys, give me two minutes to get the table cleared," she called, breezing by with a large black bucket. Clint missed what she said entirely, asking Barney to repeat what she said for him. By the time he finished repeating her sentence, Eleanor had the table cleared and was wiping it down with a rag. "Okay boys, table is all yours. Coffee?" Over the course of the week she learned the sign for _coffee._ That was nice of her.

Both Clint and Barney nodded as they settled into the booth, Clint tucked against the corner and facing the entrances and Barney at the head of the table. Luckily no one sat behind him or that person would be completely boxed in behind his chair and into the subsequent table. When Eleanor returned she had three ceramic mugs hanging from crooked fingers of one hand and an entire carafe in the other. She placed the cups around the table and reached behind her back to pull out her notebook.

_How was your weekend, Frank?_

Barney was dividing coffee between the mugs as he read over her hand. "Frank? That's not his name."

Clint could have possibly snapped his neck at the speed he looked at Barney, his eyes narrowing. _I didn't tell her my first name._

Eleanor spoke at the same time. "It's not? What is it then?"

The look Barney gave Clint meant he would get a lecture when they got back to the apartment. He turned back to her and finger spelled it out. "Francis. It's actually Francis."

Clint visibly relaxed, although Eleanor giggled into her knuckles. "Francis? Really?" _I hope this isn't rude but I can see why you like 'Frank' instead._ Clint bobbed his fist up and down in agreement. _That means yes. See, I remembered :-)_

They looked at each other and grinned, long enough that Barney waved his hand in the middle of the table and signed as best he could while talking. "Will you two find a room or something? Christ, the magazines in the dumpster behind our apartment are less pornographic than you two." Clint stretched below the booth and kicked at Barney's shin as Eleanor dropped her head into her hand in pure embarrassment. "Are you seeing this? Your boyfriend is assaulting me."

"Fuck you," Clint playfully snarled, flicking one of Barney's empty creamer cups at him. The cup bounced off his shoulder and onto the floor, drops of cream flecking the table and his button-down. Eleanor slid out of the booth and bent to retrieve the cup before another waitress stepped on it.

"So Barney, Frank has been coming here for a few months now but this is the first time I'm seeing you here. Actually I didn't even know he had a brother until a few weeks ago."

"Yeah, he's an ass like that. Actually Frankie here just added a ramp to the back of the apartment a few days ago so I've been a little stuck as of late."

Eleanor pulled a dishrag from her apron and wiped at the freckles of cream on the table. "Well why would you move into an apartment without a ramp? That seems a little obvious."

"I could still walk when we moved in."

Her face turned deep scarlet in embarrassment, shame in her face rather than playfulness. "I'm so sorry, that was incredibly insensitive-"

Barney waved her off. "I got shot. Shit happens. No way you could've known unless Frank told you, but it appears he hardly said anything about me at all during your little dates."

"No, he hasn't said much about himself at all."

Clint looked back and forth between them while stirring the coffee in his mug, although he did not actually add anything to it. He always liked his coffee strong and black, he rarely added anything to it unless it was extremely weak like the way Bruce Banner made his. Kate usually went for those expensive espresso coffees whenever they were out, which Clint could never justify paying five dollars for a cup of coffee when he could buy an entire container of grounds for the same price. And people thought he was stupid.

He stopped stirring as soon as both pairs of eyes landed on him. _What? Why are you looking at me like that._

 _I don't what kind of bullshit lies you've told her,_ Barney signed quickly. _This is your show._

"What do you want to know?" Lately Clint had a tendency to smash his words together, so instead of discernible words his sentence sounded more like 'wadyouwan t'know.' He usually signed when he spoke; even if other people around him did not sign for whatever reason they understood him more readily if his speech was supplemented by sign, despite how awkward it looked. _I'm gonna be really vague._

"Well, everything," Eleanor giggled. "You know more about me than I know about you."

He considered what to tell her for a moment, trying to remember bits of his life that were generic enough to be believable but not obviously a half-truth. He made a meaningless gesture, the sign equivalent for 'umm,' and asked Barney if he would interpret. _We were born in Iowa, lived there for most of our lives, I guess. Then we travelled all over the place with our dad, never stopping for more than a few weeks in one town._ More often than not when Clint mentioned their "dad" he actually meant Mr. Carson from the traveling circus. Eleanor put her hand up to stop him.

"Wait, why did you have to move so often? And what about school?"

 _He went where the work went. And we both got a GED-_ Clint stopped with his hands in the air as the two goons, Jerry and Oz, walked through the main entrance. Barney and Eleanor both turned to look in the direction of Clint's gaze.

"Oh no, not those two. I wish they'd find some other place to go, they're really annoying."

"Who are they?"

"Just some jerks who come in most weekends. All they've ever done is make fun of Frank but my boss doesn't want to make a scene or I'd throw them out."

Clint thumbed at the handle of his ceramic mug, watching the two intently as they walked to their regular table on the right hand side of the diner. Jerry stopped momentarily, trying to figure out which to make fun of first: Clint's face or Barney.

"Hey Oz, look, the dummy is back. And he brought a friend, I bet it's his boyfriend."

Oz, the taller man wearing a pageboy cap that angled about as sharply as his jawline, nudged Jerry along. "Probably, I mean look at his face. Boyfriend probably did that to him; five bucks says he wasn't listening."

Barney looked at the two with a raised eyebrow, trying to figure out how to play them. Clint buried himself in the corner of the booth to put distance between them as if he were still afraid of the pair. Eleanor simply glared. Her death glare could put Natasha's to shame. 

They sat down and removed coats, hats, scarves, and gloves, waving over another waitress to take their order. "Coffee," Jerry commanded. "Now." The waitress about-faced and walked back to the kitchen, a snarl raising her lip the entire way back. Barney grinned at her, then turned back to the table. 

"Just ignore them." _Are those the guys you want to listen to?_

 _I could hear them before, but now it's too busy to understand much. I just hear bits of what they say._

_Get Eleanor to talk, then; I'll pretend to interpret for her. Just look interested._

Clint nodded and reached for the ever-lightening carafe. "Anyway, what about you, Eleanor? Where did you grow up?" Her face twice when he said her name, and he knew he pronounced it wrong. 'Elnor' was the closest approximation he could make at the moment.

"Well, I grew up in Manhattan, but I moved out to Nevada for a bit with my mom after my dad died." She continued speaking as Barney leaned back in his chair to listen across the aisle, signing what he could hear during breaks in Eleanor's story so it appeared natural.

 _So we have the security code now, which means fewer alarms._ Clint had to glance across the aisle to see who was talking first. Oz.

_Yeah? Well, that doesn't mean shit if we don't know what other security measures there are._

_The building is practically falling apart, most likely the security alarm is the most they can afford._

_Think about who we're dealing with, Ozzie. These aren't regular people._

_They're kids, how bad could they be?_

Barney stopped soon after Eleanor finished speaking, folding his hands over the table. Clint smiled at her and mentally panicked to figure out the next thing to say as he was not paying attention to her in the slightest. "Did you go to school or anything like that?" It was the best he could do, and he prayed her answer was more than just a no.

"I went to a few different ones, actually, I kept changing my major. First it was..."

Good, that meant she had stories behind each of those majors. Barney scratched his stubble and cocked his ear to the side to hear the other two once again.

_You know once we get the main girl, it'll be easier to get to him, right?_

_Yeah, I know that. Fuck, I'm not that stupid. Not as bad as dummy over there._

Clint's eyes darted across the aisle to see Jerry stab his thumb in Clint's direction, his hand tightening around his mug. Suddenly they both looked over in Clint's direction. "Hey Dummy, what the fuck is your problem?" Barney barely shook his head at Clint to keep him calm and in his seat. "Fine, if you won't listen, I'll ask your cripple boyfriend. Hey Wheels, your man want something from us? He better not be lookin' for money, I don't want him blowing either of us in an alley somewhere."

Barney twisted his fingers and looked behind him as best he could. Since they sat directly behind him he could only see Jerry, the smaller of the two, in his periphery. Any talk like that angered him; when they were younger and still traveling with the circus, TrickShot brought up the topic of allowing someone to fuck either one of them for food money on more than one occasion. Clint never knew any of it, Trick only ever brought it up with Barney. But by Barney's 16th birthday he'd done more to put food in Clint's stomach, and to keep other men from ever laying a hand on little brother, than Clint would ever realize. Despicable things, mostly with men three times his age. Trick would always tell them Barney was 18.

Seeing Barney's reaction, Jerry now knew who he could target. "I wonder if Dummy's little girlfriend is just collecting charity cases. I bet the cripple one is homeless." Oz chuckled but didn't say anything in response. "What's the matter, Wheels? You ever get tired of other people taking care of your ass? She probably helps him after he shits-"

That finally made Barney angry enough to unlock his wheels and turn around. "You got something to say to me, motherfucker?" 

Both Jerry and Oz grinned back. "Not really, just wondering when Dummy's girlfriend is taking you both back to the freak show. I hear the circus is in town." Clint had to bite his cheek at the absurdity of that comment--the circus would never go to a place that was under 65 degrees, let alone in the teen digits. The more Jerry spoke the closer Barney inched his way over to the other side of the aisle. Before he made it past the center table, Clint slid out of the booth and grabbed the handlebars.

_Let's just go, don't worry about it._

_I'm gonna fucking kill him-_

"Hey," Jerry interrupted, "I don't know any of that retard hand-waving shit."

 _Come on, let's just go home._ Clint tried to make it apparent that he really didn't want to fight anyone right now, especially unarmed and while his face was still healing. Plus he would lose his weak persona.

Barney looked between the two goons and Clint, then to Eleanor who was wringing the bottom of her apron. "Fine, let's go."

"Yeah, get out of here and let the rest of us normal people eat in peace, for fuck's sake."

Neither looked back at the pair as they made their way to the exit. Half way to the door Clint remembered that he was yet to pay, so he jogged back to the table and laid a few bills down, leaning into the booth to peck Eleanor's cheek and rub her hands so she would stop wringing her apron. "Next week?" She nodded at him, patting his hand and gathering the ceramic mugs on the table. Clint jogged back to Barney and pushed him out the door, enough to get over the large bump on the ground designed to keep the cold out and the heat in.

They walked two blocked before Clint tapped him on the shoulder. _You alright?_

Barney clenched his jaw shut, coming to a full stop. _I've decided that whatever your fucked up scheme is or however we're gonna do it, we're taking those two down._


	12. Wednesday, December 24th

Celebrating Christmas was a rare occasion in Clint's life. Most of the Christmases he could remember were afterthoughts, and the only reason he acknowledged it was because someone forced him to do so. Their father always drank a particular spiced rum around Christmas, and usually the bottle ended up thrown at their heads at some point. The nuns at the orphanage made him bow his head and pray, even though he didn't know what a prayer was at the time and couldn't hear enough to learn how to do so. SHIELD usually had him out on some type of mission during the holidays, and if he happened to be on base there might be some type of food the cooks rarely made. The first time Clint experienced anything resembling an actual Christmas was when Coulson invited him to have a drink in his office on Christmas Eve exactly ten years ago. Coulson gave him a copy of _The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood_ , which he still owned but was yet to actually read it. That book was one of Clint's most prized possessions.

Last year they had some type of Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa celebration in the hallway on the first floor that lasted a few hours and most of the building's residents stopped by at least for a few minutes. The ones who stayed either had no other family or, in Aimee's case, had a family that did not want them home. Last year Aimee's girlfriend was forced to go home to New Jersey over Christmas so Clint was happy to see that she stayed this year. Despite this, most tenants still felt the heavy reminder that this was the first year without Grills. In the hallway Clint managed to set up a small memorial on the table of potluck food that everyone contributed to, namely the unit letter that was above his door and one of Grills' barbecue utensils. Others added little bits and pieces to it, such as a packet of hot dogs (which was Tito's idea), or a trucker hat provided by Deke that reminded him of Grills. It was reminiscent of most of their lives: broken and pieced together but full of meaning.

Simone took the boys to visit her sister and their cousins but she would return well before dinner. From what Clint could gather (mostly through Barney) the relationship she had with her sister was courteous at best and her appearance with the boys was primarily to keep their father happy. If anything the boys had more cousins than Barney could keep track of so they at least had someone to play with while the adults pretended to be civil for a few hours. When they finally made their way home, they were fairly worn down. 

Barney was trying to reach across a table for a bottle of bear just out of his reach when André burst through the main door to the apartment, trailed by Simone carrying a sleeping Jeremiah as well as the freezing wind. Anytime someone opened the main door the cold swallowed any warm air that managed to stay in the hallway despite the heater that Tito dragged down the steps. Barney stopped reaching for the bottle as soon as he heard André's boots slapping at the wooden floor as he ran down the hallway, stopping in front of Barney. "Look, Uncle Barney! Can we play it? Please?"

It took Barney a moment to focus on what the little boy held in his hands. For about five seconds André waved a small box back and forth until Barney reached his hand out to hold André's still. Simone appeared behind her son and tugged at his large coat. "André DeShawn, what did I tell you on the way home? You aren't even out of your coat yet and you already forgot what I done told you."

"Sorry, mama," he mumbled, unzipping his coat and letting it fall to the floor in the middle of the hallway. The box he held contained a card game that Barney saw once or twice in a store, although the only thing he really heard about it was that there was an adult version. The adult version was fairly similar, only the adult version also contained a card about Pac-Man swallowing large amounts of come. Barney figured the kid version, with its cute little apple on the front, did not contain such cards. At least he hoped it didn't.

Barney handed the box back and then reached up to take Jeremiah so Simone could remove his coat and toboggan. Jeremiah screwed up his face at the movement, obviously not happy that his sleep was interrupted for any reason. In Barney's lap he twisted and whined when Simone pulled his large jacket from his arms, although as soon as she let go he dropped his forehead into Barney's neck and fell asleep once again. "We can play as soon as we've got everything cleaned up. We won't be too much longer, I promise. Do we got a deal?"

The little boy smiled, showing off the gap that once held a baby tooth. "Deal. I'm gonna show Uncle Clint." André snatched the box from the table and took off down the hallway to show Clint, who was talking to Aimee about the ramp installed last week. He crashed into Clint's waist and held the box high until Clint looked at it closer, then pulled the box back to his small chest and signed the word _play_. With one hand, too. Barney was impressed.

With Jeremiah curled in his lap, Barney's movement was very limited. However he protested when Simone reached to take Jeremiah back. "I got him, I got him. What'd you tell him on the way back?"

"I told him that we could play before he went to bed if he was good for the rest of the night. Santa tends to come early for both of them so getting André to actually sleep and not get out of bed every fifteen minutes tends to keep me up most of the night. How's the party been?" 

" _Sporadic_ is the only word that comes to mind. People come and go but just about everyone has stopped by for a few minutes. How was your sister's?"

Simone shook the melted snowflakes from André's jacket that made a small puddle on the floor. "Well the boys had fun, so that was nice. My sister still thinks our father should live with me instead of the nursing home, but I just don't have the space for him nor the time to take care of him. I had to put up with their condescending looks all night."

Barney scoffed and patted Jeremiah's back. "It doesn't seem like anyone else is jumping to spring the old man out, either."

"Exactly. And besides," Simone spoke in a low voice, "I doubt he'll see next Christmas." She ran her fingers through Barney's bangs that swooped above his forehead. Even as a little boy his bangs always parted in that direction. "Anyway, I'm going to help Clint get everything put away. You sure you're okay with him?"

"Yup, he's good to go." She unlocked his breaks and maneuvered him into a doorway so no one would crash into him as serving dishes and pans were retrieved and the table cleared away. André stood next to the chair and leaned against the arm rest until Barney patted his lap so the little boy would crawl up and sit.

After a few moments of flipping his card game box from back to front, André stared across the hallway at the wall with his eyebrows furrowed as if he was royally confused. "Hey, Uncle Barney?"

"Yeah, buddy?"

"How do you think Santa Claus can get into the apartment? We don't have a chimney and Miguel at school said you have to have a chimney or he skips you."

Barney had to think about his answer for a moment, choosing his words carefully. "Well, remember how me and Uncle Clint grew up in a circus? We never had a chimney and we were never overlooked." That was an outright lie. They were overlooked most of their lives. "Santa is a smart guy, and since the front door to the apartment isn't locked he usually just walks right in."

"Does you think Santa will skip Uncle Clint since he can't hear Santa ask what he wants for Christmas?"

That made Barney laugh from deep within his gut. "Uncle Clint only ever gets coal for Christmas. Santa stopped asking a long time ago, he just goes ahead and puts Clint on the 'naughty' list." 

"Did you ask Santa if he would fix your legs?"

"Nah, doesn't usually ask adults what they want for Christmas."

André nodded as if Barney had spoken a universally accepted rule. "I asked Santa if you would be our daddy. Maybe that's why he didn't ask you."

Barney froze in the middle of patting Jeremiah's back, unsure if André wanted a response or not. "If Santa asked me I would say the same thing, buddy." 

He didn't want to get André's hopes up; the idea of Barney getting married (or in a relationship that wasn't merely sexual in nature) was a foreign concept to him. Barney did not want to do anything that hurt Simone and since he rarely stayed in one location for more than a few months at a time he did not want to settle down only to get a restless spirit once again. There was also the issue of being a step-father compounded by the fact that Barney was white and red-headed, which would make them stand out and he was concerned that the boys would face ridicule.

André leaned against Barney so that he could lay his head on his shoulder. Jeremiah remained tucked under Barney's chin. "I know my daddy is in prison, but mama won't say anything about it. Do you think Santa can go inside a prison? Maybe if Santa asked what they wanted for Christmas they wouldn't have to be there anymore. But I think I want the Bad Guys to stay there."

For André, the "Bad Guys" were the Tracksuit Draculas that tried to take over the apartment, the ones Barney threw off the fire escape after they held Simone and the boys hostage in their unit. It all happened on the same night Barney was shot. 

Clint and Tito had the table laid on its side so they could carry it back into his apartment. As soon as Clint walked back out Tito's unit, André slid off Barney's lap and ran to their front door, waiting for Simone to unlock it. "Can we play now, mama?"

"As soon as I get the door open, baby, calm down." André noticed that Clint was heading towards his and Barney's unit, so he ran back down the hall and tugged on Clint's hand. 

"No, Uncle Clint, you promised you would play!"

Clint signed _dog_. "I'm just going to get Lucky, I think he would want to play." André appeared to accept that answer and turned back around to his mom. Clint opened his unit, Lucky charging out the door and into the hallway to sniff for food until he saw André which diverted his attention once again and the dog raced down the hall to sniff at the little boy instead. Clint wheeled Barney out of his spot in the doorway and the five of them, plus Lucky, went into Simone's apartment to wait for Santa.


	13. Thursday, December 25th

Clint was rarely awake before ten in the morning if he could help it. But right now with the extra 120 pounds sitting on his back he found sleeping difficult. He squinted his eyes open enough to see the source of the added weight, then swat at the body sitting on him.

"G'way, Kate."

She didn't move a single muscle, at least not to get up. Instead she continuously jabbed the side of his head near the scars that remained from the surgery to repair his ear canals six months ago. Kate must have been saying something to Lucky to rile him up; Lucky trotted in circles around the bed and moved to jump but the inconsistent movement of the bed kept his back legs planted. Clint slapped at her hand and she countered by moving the location of her finger and continued jabbing. When he was fed up Clint rolled onto his back, effectively shoving her off the bed. "You're such a brat," he whined, rubbing his eyes. Lucky licked at his face, excited that Clint was finally awake and able to take him outside. When Clint opened his eyes fully, Kate was reaching towards the left side of his face.

"[wh]at happe-" This early in the morning Clint was not mentally capable of putting forth the effort to lipread. Kate was surprisingly easy to read, however; he believed it was because she was such a big mouth and if he told her so she usually punched him in the shoulder. When he felt her finger against his cheek, the one with a fracture that was still mending, he jerked his head back. 

"Goddamit, stop." Clint sat almost stock-still for the moment to wait for his brain to catch up with the rest of his body, then tossed back his comforter. He stood slowly and ignored Kate, who was probably still talking, and patted his side so Lucky would follow him down the steps. He always left his hearing aids downstairs primarily out of habit. When he first received them he had a reason for keeping them in the drawer under the coffee pot but he'd since forgotten the reason. Most likely because he visited the coffee pot at least once each day if not more often. Just to piss her off, he took his time this morning. Instead of putting them in, he made a pot of coffee and looked through his fridge for something to eat. He could only find a bit of left-over turkey from the party last night and a small can of beans in the pantry to the right. When he turned around and leaned against the counter, Kate stood at the island obviously pissed that he ignored her.

 _Blue?_

Clint scrunched his face together and tried to think of what prompted that question. "Blue?"

Kate shook her head and tried a different sign. _Brother?_

"Oh, you mean Barney? If he's not down here he's probably at Simone's, the kids wanted him to be there when Santa Claus came."

Kate looked as if she wanted to stomp her foot. She threw her head back in an exasperated sigh and covered her eyes, dragging her hands downward. _No. Face._

Clint touched at some of the bruises remaining, most of which were around his eye. The skin around his eye had patches of yellow mixed with spots of near-green skin. Another week and much of it would be gone, although he did not know about the fractures. Those typically took much longer to heal, especially the one along his jaw. He still had trouble chewing on the left half of his mouth. "Oh yeah, that was Barney. We got into a fight. Shit happens."

Barney and Kate's relationship was civil, although they were typically at odds with one another. Usually they fought over Clint; Kate would continue verbally speaking even if she did not have Clint's full attention yet, and Barney would tell her off. Their most heated argument happened in the weeks immediately following the incident on the roof when Clint stayed in bed for most of the day. Kate had been home from California for only a few days when she became frustrated with Clint's lack of response, tugging at his arm to try and pull him out of bed and just generally being annoying to provoke _any_ kind of response. Barney eventually yelled at her from the base of the steps to knock it off. She stomped down the steps, marching straight to Barney and standing in front of him with her hands on her hips.

"He has to get out of bed _sometime_ ," she spat. Barney sat himself up straighter as if digging in to prepare for a fight. "He can't lay in bed all day."

"Yeah? What do you think he's been doing for the past three weeks? And you can't say shit, you haven't even _been here_. You took the dog and you left him here. While _you_ were having fun in California, _we_ were defending the apartment. _We_ were being stabbed and shot. You have no idea how bad it's been. You have no fucking clue. The fact that he is even awake and staying in bed instead of leaning over the edge of the roof to figure out if the fall would kill him? That's a fucking improvement." She grit her teeth and looked down at her shoes, unable to formulate a response that would not come out as more than a stutter. "Bobbi wanted to hospitalize him. Coulson wanted to hospitalize him. They probably still want to, actually. And I'm doing my best to keep that from fucking happening. So stop talking to him as if that'll fix him or as if he could hear you, because he _can't_. He can't and he's not going to-"

Barney stopped mid sentence as Clint stepped tentatively down the top step, holding as tight as he could manage to the railing. His large purple hearing aids contrasted so much from his pale skin, even though they were fit specifically to his ears they still looked unnatural. Clint was already fairly thin, broad shouldered but thin, and now he looked pallid and gaunt. When he wasn't holding a bow, he usually stooped his shoulders forward and now he looked as though his shoulders were simply too heavy to carry. Clint put a lot of weight on them as of late.

He dragged his feet down the steps, sitting down on the last. _Finish._

Stop.

Kate sat down on the stops next to him and nudged him somewhat, noting the bones of his shoulders. She wrapped her petite warm hands around his cold and dry left hand and laid her head against his shoulder.

 _Do they really want to?_ Clint asked Barney, his head against the bottom railing.

_Who?_

_Bobbi. And Coulson. Do they really want to put me away?_

Barney nodded. _They talked about it._ He was never one to bullshit anybody, particularly his little brother. Clint looked down to the floor and rubbed the back of his head, a nervous habit he did since they were little boys. After everything that happened with Loki, being put on a psych lockdown would effectively end his career with SHIELD, and possibly with the Avengers. _Hey,_ Barney waved his hand in front of Clint's face. _I'm not going to let them. You know I won't._

Since that day, the day they truly butted heads, Kate for once in her life withdrew without being unnecessarily dramatic about doing so. She still teased Clint, more now that he could mentally handle it, but any major decision was left to Barney. Because Barney was right; she was not here at all when they both needed her most. Instead Kate was out in California pretending to be some type of Avenger-spy or secret agent, she didn't even know. Kate thought she could do everything independently, that she didn't need anyone in the world at all. She was sorely mistaken. She needed everyone's help. And even if he didn't want to admit it, Clint needed her help as well.

Although at the moment she wanted to throw him into the Harlem River. When he finally put his hearing aids in and pushed the battery door closed, he sighed through the first three seconds of an onslaught of noise. He always hated that part. 

"Merry Christmas, Hawkass." Kate shoved a long wrapped box across the island, dropping herself into one of the bar seats. Clint turned over the small box a few times and shook it, not to hear if anything was in it but to gauge its weight. "Just open it, will ya."

He set it down on the counter and peeled back the wrapping. Kate must have wrapped it herself, she used two different wrapping papers. When the wrapping paper lay in gutted chunks across the counter, he looked at the box and frowned. "Three Beers? If you got me alcohol I'll love you forever."

"What? No, it says 'De Beers.' You know, the one on 5th Avenue?"

Clint looked down at the box again and held it in front as if he would dirty it with his touch. "Katie-Kate, what am I going to do with jewelry that costs a year's worth of my SHIELD salary? You have to take whatever this is back."

"Seriously quit bitching and just open it."

Clint bit his bottom lip and pulled apart the lid from its base. Inside lay the next best thing to three bottles of beer: a bag of coffee. And not the cheap generic shit he usually buys. This was top-shelf coffee that he could rarely afford. "Hey thanks, Katie-kate, this is awesome," he grinned, stepping around the counter to kiss her temple. "I got somethin' for you also, let me go get it." Clint bolted up the steps three at a time, Lucky bounding along with him. He appeared ten seconds later holding a horrendously wrapped...something. "Here."

Kate looked at it a moment before taking it from his hand, feeling it collapse inward. Clint wrapped it in newspaper and some of his left-over tape from when he attempted to organize his arrows last year. Most of the tape came apart with the first pull. 

When the "wrapping" came apart, Kate held a stuffed labrador retriever in her hand with a little red collar, its fuzzy pink tongue hanging to the side. To the side dangled a gold dog tag with 'Lucky' inscribed in it. "So you won't keep taking my dog, damn it," Clint grinned devilishly. Kate smacked his chest with the stuffed dog, then held it down for Lucky to see. The real Lucky nosed and sniffed at the toy, inhaling deeply and finally licking at its soft face. He opened his jaw to bite at the dog (many of his toys were the same material) until Kate jerked it away.

"No, Lucky, not yours. You have like a billion toys hidden somewhere in the apartment, go find them." Lucky cocked his head to the side and raised what would be his eyebrows. "Do you want to go outside?" Lucky recognized the word 'outside' and circled in his excitement, running to the door and pacing back and forth. Kate tapped Clint's elbow to grab his attention. "I think _your_ dog needs to go out."

"Huh? Oh, yeah, okay. Let me get my coat, Lucky." As Clint dug through his rather bare closet he stuck his head out. "Hey, did you see Barney's new ramp?"

"New ramp? Where?"

"The back entrance. I'll stop by Simone's and steal him so you can see how it works." Clint grabbed Lucky's leash from the hooks next to the door and tugged on his collar to clip the leash to the tag. Kate followed behind and out into the hallway.

"Wait, how did you even afford a ramp? Hey, look at me."

"Yes, ma'am?"

"How did you afford a ramp?"

Clint stood in front of Simone's unit and rapped on the door. "Stark. I told him the idea and let him go nuts. He had it designed and configured in about three hours, then came by at the ass-crack of dawn. Not even the ass-crack. The taint of dawn."

Kate scrunched her face at the mental image. "That's pleasant." The doorknob twisted back and forth until André was able to yank the stuck door backwards. The little boy stood in the doorway still wearing his pajamas until Simone called them all in so they could shut the door and keep the warm air inside. André ran back to his pile of Santa gifts and chose the largest, a blue monster truck with flame stickers along the side. Jeremiah sat on Barney's lap at the kitchen table playing with a pile of yogurt drops meant for toddlers. "Hi, guys!"

André snapped his head up from ramping the monster truck over a line of toy cars. "Hi, Miss Kate." Suddenly he shoved the monster truck aside and ran to a different pile of toys, digging through them until he found a specific toy. He ran back to Clint and poked his stomach to grab his attention. "Look, Uncle Clint! Santa Claus gave it to me!" In his hands he held a small plastic bow with foam "arrows" zip-tied to the side. "Will you show me how to do it?"

Clint plucked the small bow from his hands and pretended to inspect it as if he was an antique collector at a small auction. He even sniffed it just to make André laugh. It was _maybe_ the length of his forearm, not long enough or enough tension to cause any damage other than knock over unsecured items. On the tips of the foam arrows were orange suction cups, which Clint tapped then snapped his hand backwards. "Ouch!" André giggled and leaned forward so Clint would hug him. Clint bent down and scooped him up so they were more or less eye level and he could see the little boy's face more easily. Kids' voices, since they were typically high pitched, were out of the frequency range which Clint could hear. Whenever André was excited about something his voice rose to an octave that Clint found difficult to understand. "Hey, dude. You have a good Christmas?"

André bobbed his fist up and down. Sometimes Clint was absolutely floored at how quickly the boys picked up the signs he most frequently used with them. _Yes, no, Mama, Barney, Lucky, play..._ They were picking it up faster than Clint and Barney did when they were younger. Even Jeremiah made attempts to sign; the only thing he could sign clearly was the letter O, which was his sign for Cheerios. Sometimes he 'babbled' by moving his hands in ways that never made a coherent sign. Barney mentioned more than once that as soon as Jeremiah gained more dexterity in his fingers he would pick up signing faster than he could verbally talk.

Simone opened the bathroom door and stood in front of the mirror, rubbing some type of lotion into her cheeks. Clint could never figure out why there were at least three billion types of lotions and creams women used. He knew what the clowns in the circus used to apply their thick bold colors and bright white face paint but he could never figure out regular makeup. Simone capped the lotion bottle and set it in a drawer under the bathroom sink. "André DeShawn, what's the rule about that thing?"

"Don't point it at 'Remiah."

"Or?"

"Or Lucky gets to use it as a stick to play fetch." André kicked his feet in annoyance, twisting his torso somewhat so he could show Kate. She inspected it with as much scrutiny as Clint. 

While André, Clint, and Kate talked about his new toys from Santa Claus, Lucky wondered over to the kitchen table to sniff for food that Jeremiah may have dropped. Clint had let go of his leash but was yet to actually disconnect it, but Lucky did not mind so long as the boys didn't tug on it. Of Simone's human puppies, Lucky _adored_ the smaller one. Jeremiah loved to hand Lucky bits of food and the little boy squealed whenever Lucky licked it out of his hand. Today he had freeze-dried strawberry yogurt drops to offer, although as soon as Lucky licked at it the little drop disintegrated. Jeremiah kept his hand and fingers outstretched so Lucky could lick the remainder, giggling at the dog's slick tongue. "Uncle Baba, doggy?"

Barney leaned at an angle to see Jeremiah's face. "Yeah, buddy, what's that doggy doing? Is he being silly?" Much of Jeremiah's conversation with anyone consisted of him parroting back the main words of a sentence, often without grammatical features. He would catch up soon, though. André was using somewhat-correct sentences by the time he became three years old so Jeremiah was not far behind.

"Doggy silly, Uncle Baba, silly." The little boy picked up another yogurt drop with the same hand the dog licked and popped it into his mouth. By now Jeremiah had all of his teeth save for the very back molars that were starting to painfully poke through his gums, so he could eat just about anything. However yogurt drops were still his favorite snack of choice. Yogurt drops and Cheerios. After he munched on his yogurt drop he picked up a second one and turned to face Barney. "Uncle Baba eat?"

When Jeremiah's hand came close to Barney's mouth he opened wide enough to playfully bite at the little boy's fingers, growling and gently tugging, shaking his head back and forth like Lucky with his rope toy. Jeremiah squealed and yanked his hand back, then tentatively presented it for Barney to bite. He did this multiple times until Lucky demanded attention by nosing at Jeremiah's backside. 

Clint set André back down on the floor to run around the apartment playing with random toys. He dropped himself into a chair at the table and stretched out his legs, pushing the third seat backwards for Kate to sit. "Hey Barn, Kate wants to see how the ramp works."

"Well, tell Kate that I'm currently busy at the moment."

She raised her eyebrow and gave him a look of pure exasperation. "You're holding a toddler that not only has a high-chair but is also capable of feeding himself."

"Yes I am, and I can assure you that this little guy is more important than the ramp and she can wait her fuc...I mean, flipping turn. Hey little bud, who is that?" Barney pointed across the table at Clint, who waved at him.

Jeremiah touched his forehead with his index finger. "Uncle Quit."

Clint smiled widely at the little boy. "Eh, close enough." Clint touched his forehead in the same manner as Jeremiah. "Hey Barn, what's he mean by this?"

"He's trying to do 'Hawkeye' but he can't figure out how to use any other fingers yet. He'll get there." Barney worked the little boy's fingers into a proper letter H, then did the same with his own hand. "Like that, bud." 

Clint actually liked his namesign, which was based on his old purple outfit. Because of the large letter H on the cowl of the costume with the top posts of the H continuing to the back, his namesign was just the letter H on the forehead. Kate's was the same thing, only with a K. 

He stretched across the table with his fist outstretched. "Good job, little man. Pound it." Jeremiah slapped at Clint's knuckles rather than balling his hand into a fist and bopping it against Clint's. "Or, ya know, that works too."

Barney rapped against the table to grab Clint's attention. _Any reason the girl is here all of a sudden?_

Clint shrugged. _Nope, although she did bring me coffee so she can't be all that bad._

_She hasn't been here in over a month._

_And you haven't had sex in years but who's counting?_ When Barney rubbed at the stubble on his chin, a grin hiding behind his hand, Clint bolted upright. _You didn't. Did you? Please tell me you didn't._

_Yup, and that's all I'm telling you. Unlike you who fucks everything that has a pulse and says 'yes,' I actually take my time._

Kate's head bobbled back and forth trying desperately to keep up with the conversation. "Okay, all I got out of that was the word _coffee._ What are you guys talking about?"

Clint shrugged and played with the frayed edge of Simone's coral bamboo placemats. "We were talking about the coffee you brought me, that's all."

"Clint Barton, you are the worst liar. Seriously, how are you both an Avenger _and_ a SHIELD agent? You have the worst poker face I've ever seen."

"For all you know, my awful poker face could be deceiving you."

"You're not that smart."

"Agreed," Barney chimed in, rescuing a yogurt drop from the folds of his shirt that Jeremiah dropped. When he noticed Clint yawning, he gestured for Clint to scoot closer. "Hey, let me see your tongue." Clint leaned forward with his mouth open and his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Barney held his jaw and inspected the line of stitches that remained, turning Clint's head from side to side. Some of the stitches dissolved on their own over the course of the week, others remained that would have to be snipped out. "When are the rest supposed to come out?"

"Medical said if they weren't all out by Monday to stop by, and if I don't Coulson will probably sedate me to get me to actually go."

"I'll sedate you myself," Barney smirked. "Just one good whack to the face and you'll be out like a light again." 

Kate shook her head and folded her arms, rubbing the last of the cold out of her shoulders. "You two are the most ridiculous people I've ever met. And somehow you made it to adulthood. I'm pretty sure I'm more mature than both of you."

Barney raised his eyebrow and nearly glared at her. "Don't even start that. The fact that you're back in New York with us is proof enough that you couldn't handle adulthood for even a few weeks."

That moment Simone chose to exit the bathroom, tightening the draw around her robe. "Okay, that's enough, you two. André, I need you to start taking all your Santa toys into your room. And do _not_ just dump them on the floor; find a home for them, please." 

André sighed theatrically and began gathering his toys in his arms. He carried as much as he could possibly fit, though he still needed multiple trips until the section of the apartment considered the living room was clear. Since he was still in the "quantity over quality" phase none of his "Santa" gifts were particularly expensive, and since Simone wrapped everything individually she made the tree look much fuller than it truly was.

"Mommy?" Jeremiah stretched out his arms in Simone's direction. She bent at her knee and tickled his chin.

"Yes, my love?"

"Uncle Baba..." That was all anyone understood clearly, the rest of his sentence was pure gibberish but Simone nodded as if he was speaking a profound truth. "Uncle Baba kiss?" Jeremiah kissed his palm, 'mwah' sound included, and slapped at Barney's wrist on the table. "Uncle Baba kiss."

Barney couldn't contain his smile. Sometimes watching Simone cuddle either of the boys gave him mixed feelings; he felt happy that the boys were loved and secure, but somewhat jealous that he did not have many similar experiences with his own mother. Harold and Edith died when Clint was around André's age, but long before then Barney stopped seeking her affection. Clint was definitely their mother's baby and he was so young when they died he still needed that physical connection with their mom. Barney could only remember her going through the motions, her once vibrant eyes beaten to death over the course of her marriage to Harold, as she hugged Clint against her waist. Clint would swear the last time he hugged their mom she was smiling and warm, but Barney could remember her face as she looked down on the top of Clint's head. There was nothing there. The ability to love her boys was stolen from her by a disciple of Jack Daniels and Jim Beam. 

But right now he only felt pride. Jeremiah wasn't his kid, that much was obvious, but for some reason Barney always felt proud of their little accomplishments even if he had no direct involvement. He nuzzled his cheek against Jeremiah's and snuggled him close. "Hey, thanks, little man."

Simone stood upright and stretched, her lanky arms pointed at the ceiling. She walked over to the refrigerator and tugged the door open, rattling the contents inside. "Okay, who wants breakfast? All the excitement from Santa's visit last night means I'm starving."

Kate was about to raise her hand with everyone else when her phone vibrated in her pocket. A message popped up on her screen noting that the security code to the (Young) Avenger's Mansion had been entered. She liked that she received such alerts; Kate was always fearful of setting off the alarms if she went back too late and scaring the inhabitants. With the alert system she always knew when the alarm was engaged and disengaged.

"Hmm, I wonder who came back early. Eli wasn't supposed to be back until tomorrow, Billy and Teddy will get back on Monday...it's probably Tommy." She shrugged and stuffed her phone back into her coat pocket. Whoever was back would probably still be there in a few hours. Since they would be unexpectedly staying for a while longer, Clint called Lucky over and unhooked his leash from the collar, tucking it under the chair.

"Lucky, come here and lay down, bud. Don't want you to get trampled," Clint mumbled at the dog. Lucky never actually laid down, instead he was content to sit at attention next to Clint so he could scratch behind his ears. Behind him, Simone began pulling ingredients for pancakes from the cabinets with additions from André which included chocolate chips and blueberries. While Simone cooked with André's help, Barney reminisced about funny stories from their life in the circus. Clint laughed until tears formed at the sides of his eyes and his face was red, laughing through the pain and the bruises. That was how he made it through life, essentially; he laughed his way through the negative events in hopes that he laughed so hard he would not have to acknowledge them. But right now they had very little to worry about. They were together, healthy, and loved. For an hour or two, they were whole. Even if they forgot about the ramp.


	14. Friday, December 26th

Barney's eyes snapped open as soon as heard the bell in the old wall-phone box. Why Clint needed a phone that was invented around the time Moses was freeing the slaves of Egypt made no sense to him, especially when a smaller wall phone would do the same thing. The bell rang so loud the receiver rattled on its hanger and more than once Barney considered ripping the damn thing off the wall. Not like Clint needed it anyway.

He waited for the box to stop ringing; there was no use trying to transfer off the couch half asleep if he would miss the call anyway. Typically it only rang about four times before the call dropped, so he waited until the fourth to settle back down in his blankets. As soon as his head hit the pillow, the bell rang once again. "Fuck me," he groaned, pulling himself up once again. Trying to transfer half asleep could be dangerous, although now he did not have to lug himself over a tall armrest. 

By the time he hauled himself into the seat and positioned his legs the phone stopped ringing and almost immediately started up again. He rolled over to the receiver and tore it from the base, nearly pulling the base from the wall. In his anger he dropped the receiver and bent to pick it up again. Barney's voice sounded ten times as gruff and scratchy than he typically sounded. "The fuck do you want?"

"Hey Barney, can you wake up Clint?" On the other end, Kate sniffled into her cellphone. "Please?"

Barney dropped his forehead against the wall in frustration. "No."

"Why not?"

"He's asleep. How the flying fuck am I supposed to get up the steps? I sure as hell ain't dragging my ass backward up those steps either."

Kate spoke to someone else at her location, then returned the phone back to her ear. "Could you get Simone to wake him up?"

He sighed audibly. "Fine," Barney muttered under his breath. "You're lucky she had today off, ya know." If Kate said anything in response he did not wait long enough to hear it, instead he let the phone receiver hang by the cord and rolled himself out into the hallway. 

Wearing only thin pajama bottoms and an old tank top full of holes meant by the time he made it to Simone's door his skin was already pink and prickly. He wrapped on the door and rubbed his arms to keep some degree of warmth. In his legs he could feel the cold but it felt... _muted._ The skin on his legs were reacting in the same fashion as his arms, the tiny hairs on both his arms and his legs standing up on end, but his legs did not feel the blistering cold that his arms felt. His toes were already numb to begin with, which he considered a good thing during the winter. Growing up he hated having cold toes. In the circus he would sit in the front seat with his legs stuck out underneath the heater to keep his shoes and socks warm, which in turn made his feet toasty. And when the truckers finally crashed from their amphetamine induced high after driving nearly 24 hours straight, he was the one to take over the tent truck starting at age 15. Barney would put the truck into cruise control, pop one of the left over speed pills, and stick his feet under the pedals. Clint would curl up on the bench seat next to him and sleep most of the way since Trick Shot would wake him up early every morning or work him late into the night. Life was good. 

Barney was yet to even check the time before he left the apartment and moseyed down the hallway, taking his time just to spite Kate. He heard shuffling on the other side of the door, to heavy to be one of the boys. Simone cracked open the door slightly until she saw the person on the other end, then opened it completely. "Hey handsome, you're up early."

"Yeah, not by choice. Kate called and she needs to talk to Clint but I can't get him from the loft. Would you mind coming over for just a minute and waking him up?"

Simone leaned backwards to check on the boys sitting at the table eating leftover pancakes. "Keep eating boys, I'll be right back. André, watch your brother for me."

"Yes, ma'am," the little boy called back, grabbing Jeremiah's bottle from the counter and putting it on the highchair for him to drink. Barney was glad neither of the boys saw him; if they did either André would want to play or Jeremiah would want to be held. Right now he was too fucking tired to do either of those things. Simone tightened her robe out in the hallway and padded to the other unit as quickly as she could.

"It's unlocked, go on in," Barney said, lining himself up with the door so he wouldn't bang his fingers into the door frame or get his wheel stuck. "Just be careful when you wake him up, sometimes he overreacts when he's not completely awake. See if you can get Lucky to move around the bed, that usually does it." Before Simone went up the steps, he nabbed her hand and pulled her back. "Hey," he whispered as he tugged her downward somewhat to kiss her. "Good morning." 

"There is nothing good about 7:30 in the morning, Mr. Barton," she grinned against his lips. He chuckled in agreement and let go of her hand, then rolled himself over to the phone to make sure Kate was still on the line. As he heard Kate scramble to pick up the phone and take it off speakerphone, he also heard Clint shuffling around the bed in the loft. He must have jolted awake, and for about fifteen seconds Barney listened to Simone calm him down again. He slumped down the steps a few seconds later, followed by Simone and then by Lucky. At the base of the steps Simone kissed Clint's cheek and let herself out of the apartment to go back to the boys.

Clint looked as though he went to bed twenty minutes before Simone woke him up, which was actually very probable. He yawned into the back of his hand and scratched at his face, wincing when he scratched over the hairline fracture in his jaw. _Who is it? And what do they want this fucking early?_

Barney tucked the phone into his shoulder so he could use both hands. _Kate. This better be important._ "Alright, he's here. What do you want?"

"The police are here. The place is wrecked."

\-----/\\-----

They were dressed and out the door in less than ten minutes. Actually they didn't bother changing, both just pulled regular clothing over their pajamas, which Barney typically did anyway since he was never entirely sure how cold his legs were. They would have to take the metro across town, but they could be there in less than half an hour. However, this was the first time Clint was accompanied by Barney, so a good portion of their time was finding elevators so he could get into the station. Once that was accomplished they still had to maneuver and grip at people to move so no one stumbled over him. One jackass wearing exceptionally loud headphones caught his foot on Barney's footrest platform and tripped into one of the vertical holding bars, which Barney actually laughed at. When they arrived at the correct station they reversed the process, bitching at impatient commuters coming onto the car to move so they could exit.

Nearly an hour passed by the time they were above ground once again. Luckily for them the station was situated fairly close to the Young Avengers Mansion, so they did not have much a walk. When Barney's fingers become too cold, Clint walked behind and pushed so Barney could tuck his hands underneath his coat. At some point whenever Bobbi brought her computer over again they would have to order the push gloves his physical therapist mentioned, the ones that protected a person's hands from tiny rocks or other debris as they pushed the wheels. Apparently a company made fingerless gloves as well as full-fingered gloves. Who knew.

Since the Mansion did not have a ramp, Clint would have to pull Barney backwards one step at a time to get to the front door. Policemen and their cars lined the sidewalk, although they did not have their lights on or their sirens blaring. Barney rolled easily enough under the police tape while Clint ducked underneath. As soon as Barney turned around for Clint to pull him up the first step, a cop jogged over waving his small notebook. "Woah, woah, woah, what ___ --ll do you gu(ys) thin' you're do---? Thi- _ _ an acti(ve) cry see."

Because Clint wore a toboggan, the hat covered the microphones on his hearing aids so everything sounded fairly muffled and scratchy. "Huh?" 

"I said, what __ hell to you [th]ink you're --ing?" The cop had a mustache. Clint hated mustaches. 

"I can't understand what you're saying, I'm-"

The cop moved closer, his hand on his Glock. "Get back behide the lie, -ow. Go."

Barney held up a hand to calm down the cop. "Sir, he really can't understand you, he's dea-"

Let it be said that Clint Barton made a lot of very stupid mistakes. And what he did next was definitely one of them. Instead of just holding his hands up, he reached behind him into his back pocket to retrieve his billfold, which had his Avengers ID that he tucked in the middle before they left an hour ago. As he did so he did not hear the cop draw his Glock and scream at him, drawing the attention of every other cop in the general vicinity. Before he could look back up, a large body slammed into his chest, knocking the wind out of his lungs and disorienting him entirely.

With his face planted into the grass and snow, Clint struggled against the first body that landed on his back. Ten seconds later a second body landed on him and grabbed one elbow, a third cop grabbed his other. "Stop struggling, sir, just relax." Of course Clint kept struggling, he didn't hear any of the cops and he hated when his arms were bound in any fashion. The cops on either side dug their elbows into his back and jerked at his arms to put them behind his back. Clint continued to struggle, even with three cops on his back. Barney attempted to call them off, to tell them that Clint could not hear what they were saying, but another cop shushed him and told him to back off. 

As more cops swarmed the area, Clint's voice became drowned out by the sound of a dozen cops trying to wrestle him to the ground. Suddenly a sharp pain digging into his back caused every single muscle in his body to stiffen and contract around his bones. Clint simply couldn't move, he had no control over any of his muscles or joints or movement for about five seconds. As quickly as the pain began, his muscles completely relaxed in the same amount of time and he could control his movements once again. By that point Clint was far too tired to continue fighting.

This time when the cops brought his hands behind his back he remained completely limp, not saying a word as they slapped a pair of handcuffs around his wrist. If any of he officers were speaking to him, Clint didn't know. Two of the cops hauled him up by his shoulders and brought him to his feet, a third patting him down the front. Barney had rolled himself backwards a bit to get out of the way of the cops ascending in a mad rush, and Clint could see him laughing into his hand and trying his hardest not to double over from the hilarity of the situation. 

When the third cop patted down his backside and pulled out his wallet, he passed it to the other two in the front. Over the shoulders of the cops that hauled him upright, Clint could see Barney waving to get his attention. _They tasered you,_ Barney giggled. Clint gave him a look that suggested _no shit_ , which caused the two cops to look behind them to see what Clint was making faces at. Barney rolled up as far as he could. _Just relax, I'll get them off of ya._

"He's deaf, he didn't hear anything you were telling him," Barney calmly addressed the cops, signing at the same time. "Take off his hat if you don't believe me." The cop that patted him down tugged Clint's toboggan off his head and didn't even try to hide his _oh, shit_. Without the toboggan muffling the sound, Clint could understand them much easier, save for the cop behind him. 

"Troy, take the cuffs off him," the cop on his left said. Troy must have been the cop in the back, almost immediately the cuffs were unlocked and Clint could use his hands again.

 _I'm glad you think it's funny,_ he snarled at Barney, rubbing his wrists. A cop nudged his shoulder to grab his attention.

"I need to take the barbs out," the cop said, somewhat over enunciating. 

"Barbs?"

"Yeah, from the taser. Just hold still, I got it-" The barbs being yanked out of his back made Clint lock up on his right side, and he could feel something warm run down his back. "Hey, Matthews? Grab the paramedics before they leave, let's patch this guy up. Look man, I'm sorry about that. Officer Lucas is one of our new guys, he thought you were reaching for a gun." The cop led Clint to the front steps and sat him down to wait for a paramedic or med tech, running back to his patrol car to grab the materials to file a report. Barney parked himself next to the front step.

_You doing okay?_

Clint nodded, touching the spot on his back. The spots left by the barbs stung like hell, and when he drew his hand back the tips of his fingers were bloody. The cop and the paramedic returned at the same time, one carrying a med kit and the other carrying Clint's wallet and the form for the report. As the paramedic cleaned and dressed the small bite marks left by the taser barbs, the cop asked Barney to write down everything he saw in chronological order so he could question Clint directly.

"Can you understand me alright?" The cop, who Clint could now see was named Muñoz, kneeled directly in front of Clint with his small notebook. Clint nodded at him. "What were you doing trying to get into the house, er, Mansion?"

"Kate Bishop called and asked us to come."

"If I called her out here right now, could she vouch for you?" Clint nodded once again as the paramedic applied gauze to his back. The skin that the frigid air could touch almost immediately numbed the bite marks. Muñoz mumbled into the comm on his shoulder for another officer to send Kate outside. "While we wait, who is this gentleman and how do you know him?"

Clint looked to his left. "Barney? He's my older brother, why?"

Muñoz shook his head, nonplussed. "Just protocol, I have to write down the names of all involved. Oh, here she is. Ms. Bishop, do you know these two?"

Kate stormed down the front steps, her face nearly scarlet from anger. She stopped next to Officer Muñoz with her hands on her hips. "I wish I didn't. Can you two go _anywhere_ without getting into trouble? Oh my God, you two are cursed or something." The paramedic behind Clint applied the last strip of tape across the gauze and gathered his materials. Officer Muñoz thanked him and asked Kate if she could identify the two. "This idiot," she said, pointing at Clint, "is Clinton Francis Barton. And this even bigger idiot is Charles Bernard Barton. Barney."

Clint stretched his face into the cheesiest shit-eating grin he could manage. "I'm an Avenger?"

She threw her hands up and stalked off once again, kicking at the mulch around the base of the steps. Barney scribbled his name at the bottom of the form and handed it to Clint for him to sign. Once the paperwork was checked and cleared, Muñoz cleared the two to go inside. They began the process of lugging Barney up the steps once again, backwards and one step at a time. Barney made it somewhat easier since he had the upper body strength to pull the wheels backward, but much of the work was done by Clint.

Before they went inside, Officer Muñoz handed back Clint's wallet with his Avengers ID still tucked in the middle. To show that he wasn't necessarily angry about being tackled and tasered, Clint made a show of putting his wallet in his front pocket. "If I buy a can of soda later, I'm not gonna be tackled, will I?" Muñoz laughed and turned back outside to put his paperwork back in the patrol car.

Inside the Mansion, the place looked as if a tornado formed on the inside only. Dirt from potted plants spread across the floor and mixed with the glass of picture frames and vases. End tables were overturned, the television was ripped from the wall and smashed onto the ground. Clint lived here, once upon a time, when he had some semblance of control over his own life. Longer than he cared to remember. He was a ninja at the time, too. Yeah, those memories should stay repressed.

Kate wandered back to their location, her complexion less angry, and hugged Clint under his arms. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to yell at you. This is stressful." Clint pulled her back and asked her to repeat herself.

"Don't worry about it, Katie-kate, not the first time I've been at the bottom of a cop orgy and probably won't be the last. So tell me what happened, from the beginning."

She led them to a corner out of the way of officers mulling in and out of the front door. "Remember yesterday, at Simone's I got the alert about the security alarm being deactivated? I thought it was just Tommy or one of the boys coming home early so I didn't think about it. Since it was so early this morning when I left I took a cab back here, flipped on the lights everything was just...everywhere. The door wasn't kicked in, the glass wasn't broken. No forced entry whatsoever."

"Did you secure the place?"

"Do you _really_ think I'm that dumb? Of course I did. I checked every room, every hallway, everything. Even the closets. Then I called the cops, then you-"

"Yeah, thanks for waking me up, asshole," Barney grumbled through his teeth. Kate nudged his footrest platform to shove him a few feet backward. 

"And before I was so rudely interrupted, while I was waiting for the cops to show up I kept looking. None of the back rooms were touched; Eli's room is fine, and Billy and Teddy's room is messy but it's always messy unless Billy casts some type of spell on it. It's like they stopped in the office."

Clint looked up to the top of the steps and thought to himself the best way to get Barney up them. This staircase had more steps than the staircase at the apartment, or at least the apartment staircase was separated by a platform. These steps had no such break. Barney turned to look in the same direction as Clint, then turned back. "Hey, just go up there. I'll be fine down here." 

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I'll poke around and see what I can dig up." He turned around before Clint could say anything else and rolled into another room.

Clint shrugged and charged up the steps two at a time, Kate following closely. At the top of the steps, the destruction looked equally as tornadic as the first floor, only it all stopped three-quarters of the way down the hall. They started with the office first, since that seemed to be the place that the intruders stopped.

Inside the office, the smallest of what would have been a bedroom, the main desk was overturned and gutted. Drawers were littered about, books tossed all over the floor. A paperweight left a large crack down the middle of the window, the curtains hung at a 45 degree angle. None of the Young Avenger's personal documents were kept in the office; they were kept in a secured vault in the bottom floor next to their Danger Room. Most of the paperwork upstairs in the office was receipts and bills that still needed to be paid.

Clint kicked at one of the books, trying to think his way through the possibilities. Who else would know the security code? It's not something they routinely shared outside of a small group of people that frequented the Mansion. Nothing in particular was apparent, no clue that made the perpetrators obvious. Whoever it was may have just wanted to intimidate the kids? That was the only other plausible reason Clint could think of. 

They continued searching for nearly an hour, combing through the books for important documents that one of the other kids may have planted or searching the desk for some type of hidden panel. Eventually Kate stood to stretch her back, then poked her head outside the door and talked to someone that Clint could not see. She stood straight once again and waved to grab Clint's attention. _Barney._

"Downstairs? Is he okay?"

"Yeah, he wants us to come look at something."

They trudged back down the steps, empty-handed and somewhat defeated. Barney met them at the bottom of the steps and gestured to follow him, weaving his way back to the the furthest corner of the Mansion available. The number of officers dwindled compared to when they first arrived. 

Barney led them back into the control room that also contained feeds from each of the security cameras. Clint stopped outside the door, touching the strike plate on the door frame. "Wasn't this door locked? How'd you get into it?"

"Did we not grow up in the same circus? I picked the lock, dumbass." Barney wheeled himself over to the security feed's main panel and tapped at one of the screens, rewinding the feed to around one in the afternoon yesterday. Clint watched two figures scramble into the frame, moving erratically and backwards until Barney paused the feed and played it forward. The two figures were in the office, thumbing through documents in the desk. Whatever paper they were holding looked nothing like any of the other papers inside the desk that Clint could find. One of the figures folded the sheet and tucked it into his coat, zipping it up to his neck. They seemed to be discussing something for a moment, what looked to be a very heated conversation, then turned to leave the office.

Barney stopped the recording as the two left the room and zoomed as close as he could without the frame becoming distorted. "Those two look familiar to you?"

Clint leaned into the screen just to be sure. Of course he knew.

_Jerry and Oz._


	15. Friday, December 26th (Evening)

After the last of the police officers packed up their equipment and drove off, Kate began the phone tree of calling each of the other Young Avengers. Eli wanted to come back to the Mansion immediately, but his mom protested and he was not able to leave. Billy and Teddy were able to teleport in for about an hour, long enough to magic the Mansion back together and clean up the place. Since it had been so long since Clint saw either of them, they stayed for dinner and set up in the living room.

With Chinese food boxes spread all over the coffee table, the five discussed how Jerry and Oz would have figured out the security code. 

"Is it written anywhere outside? Like on a rock or something?" Barney reached for the remaining box of lo mein across the table, his fingers barely brushing against the box. After multiple attempts to reach, Billy telekinetically inched the box closer for him to grab. "Thanks, kid."

Kate shook her head, noodles hanging from her mouth. "We've never done that, the code has always been something we can easily remember."

Barney stabbed at his own noodles with a fork, huffing to himself. "If you made it '1234' then you deserve all of this."

She tossed an unused chopstick across the table at him, landing it into his lo mein box. Teddy, predominantly quiet throughout most of the night, threw his arm around the back of the couch and rubbed Billy's shoulder. "It was, uh, it was '2212.'"

"What's significant about that?"

"February 22nd, 2012. The date of our first kiss." Teddy's face flushed red, and he bit his bottom lip as Barney groaned. "Hey, what's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, I just forget that I'm about fifteen years older than all of you," Barney smirked. "So, however it happened or however they got it, they got it. What's the next step?"

The five considered what the next available steps were. Clint busied himself by packing up empty boxes, looking at the receipt before shoving it into the bag with the trash. He stood to throw the bag in the trash but stopped. "Wait, the only thing they took was a piece of paper. Any idea what it was?" He looked at all three of the kids in turn, stopping at Kate and her guilty expression. "Kate, what was it?"

She folded the top flaps of her rice box and set it on the coffee table, mumbling something that Clint could not catch.

"Move your hand, I can't see what you're saying."

"I said it was my dad's offshore account paperwork. He keeps most of his money in a bank in Switzerland and keeps just enough here to stay in the higher tax bracket." Kate wrung her hands together, unsure what exactly to do with them. She settled for placing them in her lap. 

Barney looked up from the newspaper he was folding, searching for the features section to figure out the crossword. "Hold up one fucking minute, you had the account information to over a billion dollars just hanging out in a fucking drawer? _A drawer,_ Kate!" 

"Where else was I supposed to put it?"

"How about a vault, or at the bank, or a Goddamn lockbox for Christ's sakes? Anything would have been better than just leaving it in a drawer. Let me guess, it had his social security number on it?" Kate clenched her jaw and barely nodded, looking down at her feet. "Of course it did!"

Clint stepped in between the two and held his hands up. "Okay, okay, everybody just chill out." He rubbed at the back of his head, sighing at the ceiling. "Kate, why did you even have that document in the first place?"

"Blackmail."

Barney massaged his temples in annoyance, and he was about to speak before Clint cut him off. "You were trying to _blackmail_ your own father? Kate-"

"Just shut up, okay!" Kate stood and grabbed the trash bag out of Clint's hand, heading in direction of the kitchen. As she did so Teddy's phone vibrated in his back pocket and he stood to retrieve it.

"That's probably your mom, Billy."

Kate stopped and looked carefully at the phone, her eyebrows furrowed. "Ted, did you get a new phone? That looks new."

"Yeah, Mrs. Kaplan gave it to me for Christmas since Billy never freaking answers his and since I lost mine a few weeks ago but I haven't been able to afford a new one." Billy swatted at Teddy's knee. "Oh hey, have you guys figured out the new code yet? I was going to put it in my phone again." Everyone froze in place, dead silent save for Teddy looking around the room. "What? What's everybody looking at me for?"

"You put the code. In your phone. That you lost," Barney growled through gritted teeth. "And what exactly, did you list it as?"

Billy looked to the ceiling trying to remember what he listed it under. When he first input it into his phone he found it by muscle memory and stopped paying attention to the actual title. "It was in the little notes app, under 'YA Mansion Code' and...oh."

Barney unlocked his brakes and rolled towards the kitchen, muttering to himself all the way down the hall. "Oh my God, I'm surrounded by idiots. What the fuck did I do to deserve this, God, I swear on my life I'm being punished for something..."

When the group heard him slam the bathroom door, Billy stood to grab his coat. However Clint stopped him. "Hold up guys, one more thing. You think you can locate the two on the video? With your clairvoyance?"

He shrugged his shoulders and followed Clint back to the security room once again, mentally prepping himself for the massive amount of chaos magic he needed to find people he had no experience meeting. If he met them previously, or had a more clear picture of them, the amount of energy required would be drastically reduced. But as it is, with only a grainy image to work with, Billy would need a vast amount of chaos magic to expend. He leaned into the screen to get one last look at Jerry and Oz and closed his eyes. "I want to know where they are I want to know where they are I want to know where they are I want to know where they are..." He continued muttering to himself, squinting his eyes tightly. When he began to rock Clint reached out to steady him fearing that Billy would fall, until Teddy stopped him and gestured to step back. Five minutes passed before Billy opened his eyes and nearly fell backward, his eyes rolling back into his head. Teddy caught him by the shoulders while Clint pulled up the computer chair.

"Woah, sit down. You alright? Focus on my hand," Clint instructed, holding his hand in front of Billy's face. Billy recovered after only a few seconds and nodded when he was able to keep the room from spinning.

"I'm okay, just give me a minute," he muttered while taking deep breaths. Teddy stood behind him and held him upright in the chair, entwining his fingers with Billy's. "I know where they are. Well, I was able to get the general area. Ever heard of United Steel?"


	16. Saturday, December 27th

Once Billy was well enough to teleport himself and Teddy back to his parents' house, Kate reset the code and left with Barney and Clint back to the apartment in Bedstuy. They arrived around midnight to sleep a few hours and get ready for the day's operation. Jerry and Oz had the numbers to a massive fortune, and if they gave those numbers to Madame Masque she could do a _lot_ of damage. The damage she had the capability of doing with what amounted to a blank check was astronomical, Clint could hardly fathom what she could do.

Why Jerry and Oz didn't just use the numbers themselves, Clint had no clue. With over a billion dollars they could disappear and never be seen again regardless of what Masque wanted to do with the money. By this point, after all the bullshit Jerry said to him over the past few weeks, Clint had absolutely no fucks to give what happened to the two of them. Captain America would probably want to give him some kind of rousing speech about ethics and justice, allowing the courts to sentence them by trial and a jury of their peers. In Clint's line of work, he found that their 'peers' were bad people.

At around six in the morning he pulled on his purple chevron uniform and collected what arrows he thought he would need. Humidity and heat, or the lack thereof, made a huge difference on flight trajectory from long distances. Not so much up close, but the lack of humidity meant that at 50 yards or so he'd see a rise in arrow flight by about two inches depending on which bow he used. With the recurve it could be as much as five inches, a chance he was unwilling to take. As much as he loved his long recurve bow, he simply had too much riding on what was about to go down. The 'what ifs' and unknown variables of this scenario were too great.

He had a long tunic-style coat that he wore in colder climates that was based on his SHIELD-issued vest, but that was designed for temperatures approaching zero degrees Fahrenheit. While the sun was still down the wind was calm, Clint could handle the cold in just his regular chevron shirt. To get his heart rate and metabolic rate moving he did simple exercises (sit-ups, pull-ups, stretches) and ate a few protein bars. Enough to keep his stomach from rumbling but not enough to weigh him down. And as always on missions, he skipped the coffee. If he brewed too strong a batch, he could make himself jittery and misalign a shot.

Barney stood at his spot at the island and did what exercises he could, mostly his standing push-ups. They were quiet as they prepared for the day, knowing full well that in a few hours they could be taking someone's life. Multiple people, even, if things went south. Clint had some semblance of a plan, a very rough outline of one at least, involving Barney dressed in his old tattered clothes and using the hospital issued wheelchair instead of the new one. As Barney kept watch on the ground, Clint could take the higher ground and watch from above. Once Jerry and Oz showed, Barney could signal to Clint and he could follow along the roof. After Barney was out of Clint's sight, however, their communication would be cut off.

They dressed Barney in his old clothes and mussed up his hair, smearing his face with dirt from a plant. The goal was to make him look homeless and barring the smell he looked the part. In the circus during the shows if he wasn't working behind the tent he would work as a 'plant' to play off of a crowds hive mentality. He dressed as a member of the audience and found a seat after the bleachers were about three-quarters full, and watched the show. As the show went on he would be the one that instigated certain responses they wanted the crowds to do. If a clown fell on his ass, he'd laugh uproariously. His laughter would signal other people to laugh, even if the joke or the bit was not particularly good. After years of doing the job and the multitude of disguises he played with so he could sit through multiple shows without being noticed, Barney was fairly adept at disguises. Only six months ago he did not have a home to speak of, so this disguise wasn't exactly a farce.

Clint carried his bow case out to the curb to wait for the taxi, trailed by Barney carrying his recurve. If things truly went south, Clint did not want Barney to be put in a situation in which he could not defend himself. Most likely he would be facing people up close, so Barney took the recurve and Clint took the compound that was given to him by SHIELD. Even if he was not a morning person, Clint actually liked the quiet accompanied a winter morning. The snow absorbed the sound, and for a few minutes New York was not a city of blaring car horns and people screaming in back alleys. That was true for Bedstuy, at least. Around Broadway those streets tended to be awake all throughout the night thanks to tourists and since the large skating rink was open and the Rockefeller tree would not come down until after New Years, that area was always busy no matter the time of day. But in his little corner of the city, it was quiet. 

He felt the cold but refused to acknowledge it. In his training with SHIELD he had to withstand arctic temperatures (with proper clothing, of course) for days at a time so the current temperature was nothing. Since Barney could not move often to keep his body temperature up they dressed him in multiple layers to the point that he was sweating inside the apartment. Outside the only cold he could feel was on his uncovered face, otherwise he was quite comfortable. 

They never woke up Kate. Instead they purposefully told her the wrong timing let her sleep in an effort to keep her safe. As soon as she woke up and realized they were gone without her she'd have an absolute meltdown but Clint figured he could deal with that at some other point in time. He wanted to keep her safe, and since there were so many unknowns he was unsure how many people they would be dealing with. Adding more people also added considerable difficulty in terms of coordinating movements and since Kate knew so few signs, and he had difficulty modulating the loudness of his voice, he did not want to risk either of them shouting. They would most likely bicker the entire time anyway.

The taxi pulled up and popped open the trunk for their gear, although the driver was unsure about picking up Barney since he looked so run down. He hardly looked like himself, actually. But after a few minutes of quiet arguing with the driver, he finally gave in and shoved the old wheelchair into the trunk with their gear. Whatever language he was speaking as he did so did not sound pleasant. 

Much of the ride was spent in silence until Barney punched Clint's knee. _You ready for this? Whatever 'this' is._ Clint set his jaw and nodded, pulling his fingers back to stretch out the tendons in his forearms. 

_We'll be fine._ At least, Clint hoped they would be. They really just needed to get to Jerry and Oz, they were the prime targets. Everyone else was secondary, although secondary targets had the potential to do serious amounts of damage if they tried hard enough. There was also the issue with numbers; two prime targets were easy enough but in this case there was an unknown number of secondary targets. The Tracksuit Draculas seemed to multiply like flies over the past year, continuously spawning in hordes like some sort of zombie game. If this were a video game Clint would have long ago decimated the high score. As the temperature dropped it became increasingly difficult to discern a Dracula from an average citizen since they worse coats that covered the tracksuit insignia.

The taxi let them out about six blocks from the intended designation. United Steel sat close to the waterfront loading docks since it imported multiple shipments of steel each week. The factories were not excessively tall but provided enough height that Clint would not be seen. It was a legitimate business though, and Clint was not sure if the owner actually knew about the evil people that frequented his factories or not. Inside they manufactured mostly industrial pieces; electronic key pads, rolling steel shutters for businesses, loading dock equipment, things of that nature. Hell, they even manufactured the rolling shutters used by Yankee Stadium. Inside the factories would be full of dangerous equipment that Clint needed to scope before he charged through any of them. 

At the factory's main entrance they finalized the signal, something innocuous that looked natural but Clint would recognize from a distance. Since Barney was so warm in his multiple layers, if he rubbed his arms as if he was cold it meant that Jerry and Oz arrived and were in the vicinity. _Good luck, baby bro._

_Be careful, Bubby._

With that, Clint went around the building to scale a drainpipe. The frozen metal bit into the skin on his hand and reddened his palms quickly, seeping into his knuckles. The roof did not have an obvious standing door, instead it had a cellar door tucked into the corner that dropped down onto a platform. If he stayed in the shadows, Clint could buy some time before the motion sensing security cameras registered his movements. His first objective was to disable the cameras, then he could set up somewhere in one of the corners of the building. 

The lock to the cellar door took longer to pick than Clint expected. He brought his SHIELD equipment, and even then the lock was stubborn. Initially he gave himself three minutes to pick the lock but did not include the amount of ice that he needed to scrape out of the keyhole. To speed everything up, he flicked a lighter and held it against the side of the lock to heat the outside casing and melt the ice on the inside. When the lock was hot enough that snow melted instantly, he shoved the pick back into the lock and felt it click open. Tugging the case the U-bolt slid out and he tossed the lock behind him, yanking the cellar door open. Workmen would arrive in only a few minutes, and Clint scrambled to catch up on his timeframe. Inside the warehouse he pulled the cellar door closed once again and crouched low to avoid the cameras.

The security panel was in a control room opposite his location. Platforms wrapped around all four walls of the building, overlooking the dimly-lit equipment. The only available windows were from doors next to the main loading doors and in the manager's office on the first floor, which left much of the platform that Clint crouched on completely covered in shadows. As he strafed along the platform, he noted his only possible exits in the front of the warehouse entrance and the door that lead to the rear loading docks. If he needed to escape in that direction he would still be in a bit of a bind; the only thing beyond the door was a short platform and the Harlem River. 

He stopped in front of the control room and slowly turned the knob in case there was a guard of some kind that he did not expect. Since United Steel made keypads and other security measures they probably figured the technology they made would keep the building secure and did not hire a guard, which worked in Clint's favor. In a matter of seconds he pried open the breaker box and flipped the switch on the security cameras. If anyone questioned why the cameras were down, a flipped breaker would look like a regular overload or a short of some kind. Most likely nobody would think to check beyond that and just flip the switch back. Just to make sure, he located one of the cameras and checked that the tiny green lights were no longer active.

Clint charged back to the cellar door and shouldered it open to take his position on the roof. His bow case sat in the designated corner, and as Clint opened the case and snapped the compound open he peered over the ledge of the building to see Barney at the main entrance. A quick wave to show that he was secure and Barney turned back around to beg. Homelessness was a common part of living in New York, and since it was just after Christmas a few workers pitied Barney enough to give him a small cup of coffee and some change. Another offered him a donut, which Barney accepted and ate in about fifteen seconds. Clint smirked as he watched Barney live up the part, and he wondered what story he was telling the people who stopped. Other workers were not as pleasant, at least not this early in the morning, and Barney flipped most of them off.

The sun creeped over the buildings, the sky becoming a light purple. Foot traffic slowed considerably by the time the sun had risen fully, and Clint could see Barney growing impatient. On missions Clint could hold his position for hours, sometimes even days if he needed to do so, but Barney was not exactly trained to be that patient. Barney rolled back and forth to keep his adrenaline up, stopping at the front entrance whenever someone new walked by. At one point Clint watched as Barney counted out the change he accumulated up to that point and even though he could not see what the total was, the look on Barney's face suggested he was doing well. Well, that was good. After all this was said and done Barney could be the one to buy the beer.

As the clock crawled towards noon, Barney was running out of excuses for hanging out in one particular location. He wandered further down the street and back until the workers began pouring out of the factory once again for their lunch break. Some of the men who gave him change beforehand ignored him this time, although the one who offered him a donut asked if he wanted anything for lunch. That was good of him, and Barney hoped whatever deity or God or karma the guy happened to believe in (if at all) would keep tabs on him. As cynical as he was, there were good people in the world.

He was close to packing it up but as soon as he was ready to grab the bow case from underneath the dingy cardboard box he hid it under, Jerry and Oz rounded the corner. Barney readied himself as they drew closer, a grin spreading across Jerry's face.

"Any change, guys? Spare the price of a cuppa coffee for a fellow American down on his luck?" Jerry patted his front pockets, then reached into the pocket of his pants. Instead of bring out any kind of change, however, as he drew his hand back he only flipped Barney off. Well, that was rude. The pair laughed and continued walking into the main gate, and Barney followed them inside somewhat so Clint could see him rub his arms. "It's cold guys, help me out." 

"Then get a job, ya bum," Oz called over his shoulder as the continued walking. Barney looked up just in time to see Clint's blond hair duck behind the ledge, appearing further down the building as he paralleled their position. The pair disappeared into an alley adjacent the building and paused momentarily so Jerry could answer his cellphone. From such a distance, Clint could not hear the short conversation. As the conversation ended, the pair continued toward their destination. Clint followed as best he could on the slippery rooftops, barreling through the thick snow until his legs burned. Since the workers were all out at lunch, there were few milling around and he was safe to run like a madman across the roof to keep the pair in his sights. 

By the time the pair stopped they were at the edge of the factory's compound, nearly half a block away from the main entrance. Clint hunkered behind a heating shaft and waited for them to make their next movie. Oz pulled out his cellphone once again and called their contact, and since they were further from the noise of the dock and factory workers he could understand most of the conversation. "Yeah, yeah we're here, where the hell are you?...No, we're at the other end, dock A....Are you fucking kidding me, how did you get that from the letter A?...I don't give a shit, just get down here in the next two minutes or we're out." Oz shoved the phone back into his pocket and pulled a pair of gloves out of the other. "Dumbass went to the wrong dock."

"Are you serious? Jesus Christ, we're dealing with idiots, Ozzy." Jerry shoved a crate off a pile and set it against the wall, dropping himself onto the crate and pulling his coat tighter around his shoulders. Oz walked back and forth to keep his temperature up, his pageboy cap pulled low on his bald head. As time passed, Jerry's foot bounced with impatience and their mutterings became increasingly urgent. Jerry stood quickly and met a third person midway through the alley.

They spoke too low and too quickly for Clint to understand what they were saying. He watched as Jerry opened the front of his coat, revealing the butt of a pistol he kept tucked in the bottom pocket, and pulled out the legal document they stole less than 48 hours ago from the top pocket. The third man opened the paper and read over it quickly, nodding as his eyes scanned down the page. Satisfied, he pulled out his own phone and dialed. "Everything looks good, you can let them go...yes, I'll be sure to let them know they're safe...Yes ma'am, thank you."

The third man tucked the paper into his back pocket and reached out to shake Oz and Jerry's hands. Jerry held onto his elbow, preventing the man from turning around. "So she's letting them go, right now? My wife better be at home and safe by the time I get there or it's _your_ head I'm coming for."

Oz pulled out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter, tamping the pack into his palm. "And my son, is he alright?"

For a moment the third man looked back and forth between them, no amount of fear showing in his face. "They're perfectly fine, Madame takes very good care of her guests. Now, if you'll excuse me gentlemen I'd like to get inside because I freeze my nuts off." The man turned around and headed for the direction in which he arrived. 

So, Jerry and Oz _did_ have reasons for bypassing a billion dollars. Masque must have taken members of their family hostage or threatened them in some way, and even they were not evil enough to give up their family members for money. Maybe there was some semblance of good deep inside them. Clint highly doubted it, but everyone had the capacity to change and better themselves. Clint was a prime example; if it wasn't for Coulson it was highly likely that Clint would either be one of the guys that he followed or dead and six feet under long ago. But for the past fifteen years he had done whatever he could to prove that he deserved a second chance, that his second chance (which eventually became a third, fourth, fifth chance at the rate he screwed up) would not be wasted. 

As the men departed Clint momentarily panicked, unsure of who to follow. Jerry and Oz were the prime targets, but now the game shifted and he did not necessarily need to take them out. The third man had the important document, though, and Clint definitely needed to retrieve that. He decided to follow the third man, noting Oz and Jerry's direction but momentarily abandoning them for the time being. Most likely they would take the same path as they did to find their destination, only in reverse order, so Clint had a general idea of how they would get to the main entrance. It took them about ten minutes to walk from the main gate to dock A, so he had about ten minutes to play with and catch up with them. 

The third man was easy enough to follow. His black coat contrasted against the snow and he was too thin to be a dock worker. Most of the men who worked these factory gigs were huge and burly, and none ever came home without immediately needing to shower. But this third man was too clean and meticulous in his appearance to work a job so lowly as manual labor.

With Jerry and Oz clear enough out of sight, Clint knocked two arrows and readied a shot. "Psst, up here," he called into the alley. His voice echoed somewhat and the man stopped to locate the source, giving him enough time to aim and send the two arrows flying across the alley into the shoulders of the man's coat. The force of the arrows dragged him backward, pinning him into the wall. He struggled until he saw Clint slide down a metallic ladder, dropping down the last six feet. 

"Hi there," Clint chirped at him, waving his hand. "So I kind of need that piece of paper they gave you, if you don't mind."

The man stood calmly even though his shoulders were practically pinned to his ears. "Fuck you, Robin Hood. Your little bow and arrow toys don't scare me."

"Seriously? That's the best you could come up with? Because I've _never_ been called Robin Hood in my life, not ever. You're the first, congratulations." Clint lifted the back of the man's coat and felt around his back pockets. "Man, you must really be working the glutes, good for you." Locating the sheet he held it in front of him and inspected it, even though it was confirmed as genuine less than five minutes ago. "Alright, my friend, pleasure doing business with you."

Clint folded the sheet into a small square and tucked it into one of the tiny cases along the strap of his quiver, then jumped to grab the bottom step of the metallic ladder to haul himself back up to the roof. He had only a few minutes to backtrack and locate Jerry and Oz before they left the compound entirely, and he wanted to let Barney know that they were on their way back. Clint never had an escape plan, ever, at least not with Natasha, but he wasn't exactly working with Natasha at the moment. Barney wasn't trained in espionage.

Needless to say, they only thought of a plan up until this point. 

The rest they would have to make up as they went along. And they could do that, but it definitely had the potential to get very messy if they weren't careful. Just focus on one thing at a time, don't do anything rash, and they could get out of here and go home. Maybe they could go by the diner and get some coffee to warm up, Clint could see Eleanor if she was working, and their heroic tale could end with Clint getting the girl and riding off into the sunset. Or some other bullshit story like that, whatever. Clint would be happy if he could just go back home and watch _Die Hard._

He was nearly back to his starting point when he caught a glimpse of Oz's hat turning a corner into another alley. They stopped midway for Oz to answer his cellphone once again. "Yes ma'am?...No, we gave it to him, I swear we did...What?...Yes, yes we'll do anything, just name it...Yes there was...Okay...Yes ma'am, will do." Oz clicked off his phone and tugged Jerry along by the lapel of his jacket, walking as quickly as they could without running and muttering some type of plan under his breath. As they reached the main gate, Oz pointed at Barney sitting just outside the entrance. Clint wanted to dive off the roof and run for them or cry out to stall them but Barney would not be able to move fast enough to escape. 

Jerry called out to Barney to gain his attention as he pulled the gun from his coat pocket. Clint knocked another arrow and was going to fire but stopped with jerry turned the gun around and held it by the barrel, cracking Barney on the side of the head with the butt of the gun. The blow visibly rattled him, the wheelchair rocking back and forth, and his head dropped forward. Barney was out cold.

Looking around to make sure no one saw what they did, Oz unlocked the brakes and pushed the chair back into the compound. Clint paralleled their movements once again, an arrow ready to fire at a moment's notice, and followed them along the same course they took to meet Masque's middle man. Since he knew the route, he was able to run ahead and find a new vantage point in case they kept moving. He ran to the ledge with the metal ladder and slid to a stop. The jacket of the middle man was still stuck in the wall by his two arrows, although now it was sans middle man. He must have called Masque and alerted her that the paper was missing, taken by a man with a bow and arrow. And Clint was the only male archer she knew. 

Fuck.

He bent low and peered over the ledge, waiting for Jerry and Oz to return to the same spot in the alley. They came close, but at the last second took a sharp left toward the dock B and parking the chair against the edge of the water. Barney had since woken but was not entirely coherent yet. 

Jerry turned back around and called into the alley. "Alright asshole, we know you're watching. Wherever the fuck you are, come out and we'll let him go." Clint hesitated. He'd negotiated with villains and terrorists before but none of those situations involved family. As soon as Jerry pulled the hammer back on the gun and raised it to Barney's temple, Clint stood up.

"Wait! Wait, I'm coming down, just wait," he yelled, scrambling down the ladder as quickly as he was able. By now his heart rate skyrocketed and amped up his adrenaline, quickening his legs and warming the rest of his body. The back of his neck felt on fire. He skid to a stop in front of the edge of the dock and regarded his brother's captors.

Jerry and Oz squinted at him, trying to place the familiar face. " _Dummy?_ Oz, it's that dumb fuck from the diner."

"No fucking way, that's bullshit. The guy at the diner couldn't hear anything."

"Look at his ears, they're the same ear things," Jerry barked at him. "You know what we're saying, Dummy?"

Clint nodded, his eyes never leaving the gun. If Jerry's finger twitched at all towards the trigger, Clint would fire an arrow straight into his eye socket faster than Jerry could react and blink. "I heard almost everything you said at the diner, yeah."

"Oh my God, Jer, he even talks. What the fuck is going on?" Jerry shook his head, unable to provide a suitable answer.

"Give us back the paper and we _might_ let him go, Dummy." Jerry nudged the gun barrel against Barney's temple, the movement waking Barney further. When Clint didn't move, Jerry turned his attention to Oz. "Hey Ozzy, help me get him up." Together they hoisted Barney out of the chair and held him by his shoulders, kicking the chair back into the Harlem River. Since Barney's legs were fairly useless, he wobbled constantly until the dropped him on his knees and held him steady. "Do you really want to see him executed, Dummy? Because I'm not afraid to do it."

Clint lowered his bow and stood straight, though he never withdrew the arrows. He kept them knocked and ready to fire. "Just let him go. I'll give you your paper, just let him go."

Jerry and Oz looked at each other and mumbled between themselves. Clint's grip on his bow tightened, the string pulling back minutely as his muscles tensed. "Alright, we'll let him go." They hauled Barney upwards until he was nearly his full height, shaking him until he was fully awake and lucid. "We're gonna let you go, Wheels, you'll want to be awake for this." 

Jerry nodded. They each took one step forward, pivoted on their heels, and shoved Barney backwards into the frozen river.

Clint immediately brought the bow back up, letting the two arrows fly and running forward as soon as the arrows left his fingers. Neither had completely turned back when the arrows slid easily through their throats, driving through the jugular veins and cutting off any airflow. Oz dropped immediately to claw at his throat, blood dripping into the docks. Jerry raised the gun and fired a single shot at Clint before he collapsed, the bullet ripping through the space underneath Clint's right collar bone. The shot stopped him from running and brought him to his knee, and for a few seconds the pain searing through his shoulder was all he could think about until he registered the sound of water thrashing about.

With the water at such a frigid temperature, cold enough to form ice patches but not cold enough to stop the river from flowing, Barney would not have been able to control the hyperventilation that immediately occurred as soon as he hit the water. And since he could not kick to keep himself above the water's surface, most of the breaths he took were full of water. The layers they dressed him in to keep him warm dragged him down, and his legs further caused him to sink. Clint regained his footing just in time to see Barney's hand drop below the surface.

Clint wasted no time dropping his bow, ripping off his quiver, and diving into the river. His hearing aids would short out as soon as he hit the water, but fuck them, they were the last thing on his mind right now. SHIELD trained its agents to repress the hyperventilation reflex in water below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so diving into such cold water did not affect him. The shot through his shoulder, however, made each stroke on his right side excruciatingly painful and he had to control the grimace that threatened to spread across his face. He pounded at the water with his arms, slicing through the surface as fast as he could. Barney was just a shadow below the surface, his hand occasionally bobbing above. But never his head. 

The river was not very strong, but the cold and the pain caused physical reactions that slowed his ability to move quickly. The longer he stayed in the water, even with his head above water, he would lose his ability to think rationally. His body temperature would drop until his brain forced him to fall asleep, then he would drown, all in less than fifteen minutes. He was running out of energy quickly, and when he thought his strength would give out his hand landed on Barney's back. Clint wrapped his hand around Barney's hoody and pulled as hard as possible to turn Barney over and get his face above the surface.

"Barney! Barn, come on," Clint called, tapping at Barney's face. Water dribbled from his mouth, but there was no response. "Barney, please!" Clint kicked backward to turn around and head back to the dock. Since he was down an arm holding Barney above the water and with the additional weight holding him back, Clint fought against the water and his screaming muscles as hard and he could. Every foot he moved forward was dragged half a foot back by the river pulling at both of them. He had trouble keeping his own head above water.

The dock was within reach, just a few more feet, and as soon as he grabbed the edge of the dock he squirmed and kicked to pull his entire body upwards with one arm while keeping his hold on Barney's jacket. Clint grunted and cried out as his shoulder protested, his legs scrambling beneath the river's surface to add momentum. His muscles were ready to give out, his hand was losing its grip on the dock as he tried to coordinate all the different things that required his attention. He was about to lose his grip entirely when he felt someone grab his wrist.

Kate's face appeared over the edge of the dock, then Bobbi's, then Jess. Each grabbed one part of his arm with one hand and Barney's hood with the other. They were able to pull Clint out of the water quickly enough, and as soon as his knees hit the dock he immediately turned around and reached into the water to wrap his arms around Barney's chest. "Pull, come on, pull," he shouted, heaving backward as the others pulled at whatever clothing they could grab. The amount of clothing Barney wore was completely waterlogged, easily adding another 20 or 30 pounds to his weight. Trying to pull him out of the water was akin to pulling a boulder out.

By the time they had him out of the water completely, all four were completely soaked in freezing water. Clint ignored his wet clothing and focused only on his big brother. "Barney! Hey, come on, don't do this! Barn!" Clint laid his head across Barney's chest and waited for some type of movement. Nothing.

He got back on his knees and interlocked his fingers, slamming into Barney's chest as hard as he possibly could. Water streamed from Barney's mouth as Clint pounded his chest over and over again, his ribs threatening to break with each compression. Bobbi kneeled at the top of Barney's head and wiped away the water as it escaped his lungs. "Barney, please, don't leave me alone, you're all I have left, please!" Clint was frantically shouting, tears forming around the edge of his eyes. Barney was the only family that remained. Without Barney, Clint would truly be an orphan. 

"Come on, Bubby, just breathe, just breathe, dammit!" Clint was nearly becoming hysterical, putting all of his available energy into starting Barney's heart once again. "Don't leave me, Barney, don't-"

He felt Kate's hand on his shoulder to pull him back, to give up and let Barney go, but he jerked away from her grasp. If anything it made Clint angry; she couldn't give up on Barney that easily. He wouldn't. He refused. Instead he put all his weight into Barney's chest. "Just breathe, Bubby, please!"

Clint threw everything he had into the compressions, ignoring the agony in his shoulder. Bobbi reached out to hold Clint's elbow when no more water driveled out of Barney's mouth. But as she reached across to pull Clint away, Barney's chest hitched on its own. Clint dropped his head to Barney's chest and wanted to cry, feeling Barney's gag reflex kick in to work the rest of the water out of his lungs. Bubbly water from the very bottom of his lungs and stomach dribbled from his mouth, flowing back into his ears. Bobbi helped turn him over so he could vomit out the rest.

After dry heaving multiple times, Barney rolled himself onto his back. Clint laid his head on Barney's chest and closed his eyes, feeling his chest rise and fall. "I thought you were gonna leave me, Bub." Clint didn't feel Barney's chest vibrate to indicate he spoke, instead Barney's hand wrapped around Clint's neck and gently squeezed. Barney didn't have to talk for a week, for all Clint cared. Just knowing that he had Barney back was enough.

\-----/\\-----

At the hospital they were given a warm IV to slowly raise their body temperatures. Clint's bullet wound was a clean shot, no damage to any bones, so cleaning out the wound and stitching it up was not a problem. Barney was put on a ventilator for a few hours to make sure any remaining water in his lungs was gone. Multiple shots and blood tests later, they were finally wheeled into a room. Bobbi, Jess, and Kate came in as soon as they were given the clearance to do so.

Clint felt like he had some kind of super flu from being waterlogged and sore, so when Kate immediately hugged him he didn't have the energy to protest. Bobbi went to Barney's side first and kissed his forehead, although until the ventilator was removed he wasn't able to respond to much. Attached to his chest was a number of monitors keeping track of his heart rate and a thermometer strip kept track of his body temperature. The ventilator kept his breathing at a constant rate. 

Kate leaned back so Clint could see her face. "You're such a dumbass, you know that?" Barney's face contorted into a smile and his fist bobbed up and down in agreement. "Don't scare me like that, okay?"

Clint grinned at her and lifted the oxygen mask. "It's not something I do on purpose. How'd you know where we were?"

Jess pulled the visitor chair from the corner and waved so Clint would focus on her. "Kate told us where to go, then we just followed the tracks Barney's wheelchair left in the snow. Easy enough."

Bobbi sat on Barney's bed with him, holding his hand. He was somewhat medicated from having the ventilator placed so he fought to keep his eyes open. "You're safe now, honey, you can relax," Bobbi whispered. He squeezed her hand and let his eyes close, drifting off a few moments later. Bobbi then went to Clint's side and nudged his unwounded shoulder. "We have your bow. Both of them, actually. And your arrows. Is there a reason you needed to bring an arrow with a USB?"


	17. Epilogue: Wednesday, December 31st

Clint was cleared to leave the hospital within two days, which he was completely okay with. Barney, however, developed pneumonia and was forced to stay a few more days. 

The ventilator was removed by the end of the first night when his breathing no longer sounded bubbly, so no risk of pulmonary edema. The first night both were poked and prodded by just about every doctor in the hospital and after a while Clint wondered if the doctors were playing some type of game with them since they were both the worst patients in existence. There was probably a betting pool among the doctors on who could stick either of them without getting verbally abused. Clint's issue was not so much the exams but rather the doctors that he had difficulty understanding. Since his hearing aids were destroyed when he jumped into the river, and a few of the doctors were foreign, he had extreme difficulty trying to lipread them. He liked the nurse that stitched his shoulder though, she was nice and patient with him.

Barney woke up running a fever in the middle of the night and initially the doctors believed it was the result of the measures they took to raise his body temperature. Since Clint was in the water a shorter amount of time the warm IV was sufficient to bring him back up to the right temperature, but Barney required a warm IV, heating blankets, and warm oxygen throughout the night. By the next morning when the warming treatments stopped, his temperature did not come back down and anything he ate came right back up an hour later. A blood draw and chest x-ray later and his treatment was changed to pneumonia.

The next morning while Barney was down the hall for breathing treatments, Coulson flipped the lights to let Clint know he was in the room. "Oh my God, Coulson, please tell me you're here to bust me out."

Coulson shook his head. _Nope, you're stuck here, at least until tomorrow. How's Barney?_

 _He's been bitching at anyone who walks into the room, so he's getting better. What'd you bring me?_ Coulson pulled a small black box from his pocket and dropped it on the bedside table. _Coulson, are you proposing to me? You could at least get down on one knee or something. And you haven't even asked my father._

_Will you just open it?_

Clint popped the lid from the bottom and laughed. "Heh, I fucking love you, Coulson," he grinned, pulling his backup hearing aids out of the box. They were ugly and flesh colored but Clint didn't care, he was having such a difficult time trying to understand the doctors he could put up with them until his purple ones were fixed. "Thank you."

He pulled up the visitor chair and set himself down, crossing his leg. _Someone else is here to see you._

 _Who?_ Clint ran through a mental list of who had dropped by and who was yet to appear. _Is it Simone? Nat?_

 _Nope._ "Come on in," he called into the hallway, waving the last person Clint expected into the room. Eleanor. 

"You've met Agent Brady, right? Works in Agent Morse's lab?"

" _Agent?_ " Clint looked at Coulson and signed the word just for clarification. "You're bullshittin' me."

Eleanor opened up her coat to show him the inside, her SHIELD badge clipped to a pocket. "Only level four."

Clint looked back and forth between Coulson and Eleanor, trying to make sure he was not actually delusional. Coulson waved to get Clint's attention, signing as he spoke. "Agent Brady was investigating Masque's outer network so we sent her undercover to keep tabs on...what were their names?"

"Gerald and Osman, sir." Eleanor had the militarism of a SHIELD agent down.

"Those two. Who are now dead so her operation is a bust. No more working at the diner, if anything."

Clint wasn't sure if he should feel disappointed or not. He would miss going to the diner to see her, if he even went back at all. And what about their date? That wasn't exactly related to the mission. "Can I talk to her alone?"

"Sure," Coulson stood and straightened his jacket, striding out of the room quickly. They regarded each other for a quiet moment, Eleanor taking Coulson's place in the seat. 

"So."

"So," she repeated, he hands on her knees.

"Is your name even Eleanor?"

She nodded. "Are you sure you can't hear anything?"

Clint laughed low in his gut, pointing at the back of his ears. "Without them, not really. With them, yeah, I can hear quite a bit. Enough to keep tabs on Jerry and Oz, but then it got too loud to understand them. Remember that day Barney was with me? He wasn't interpreting for you, he was interpreting for them." Eleanor grinned and crossed her feet underneath the chair. "I liked going to the movies with you. Maybe, uh, maybe we can do it again sometime."

Eleanor stood and moved to sit on the bed next to him, leaning in as if to kiss him. Instead she leaned further back to his ear and whispered. "I know your reputation, Clint." She kissed his cheek and stood before he could say anything, quickly walking out of the room as a nurse rolled Barney back in. 

\-----/\\-----

Even though Clint was released the next day, he stayed at the hospital to keep Barney company. And also to keep him from making anymore nurses cry. They talked about growing up, how they managed to even get to this point, Simone's kids. Everything, typically over card games and in between Barney hacking up mucus until his face turned scarlet. For the first time in a very long time they could be together without one really taking care of the other, and they had permission to just be brothers for a few days.

By Wednesday night, they were both starting to feel the effects of cabin fever. Clint was itching to use his bow again but the doctor told him to keep his shoulder rested for a few weeks, and Barney wanted to roll around independently without any nurses holding him back. He'd upgraded to a cannula instead of a mask, so he was ready to get out of the room and move around for a bit. 

After they finished off another bland course of hospital food Barney gestured toward the door, indicating that someone knocked. Clint jogged to the door to answer it, cracking it open then pulling it back before the door slammed him in the face.

André and Jeremiah ran into the room screaming "Uncle Barney" and "Uncle Baba" respectively. Simone trailed behind pushing Barney's new wheelchair with Jeremiah's carseat sitting in the seat. "Hey, guys!" Simone stopped to pull Clint into a hug, careful to avoid the sling keeping his right shoulder immobile. "Oh, I was so worried about you two!"

"Yeah, well, we missed you guys. Sorry we couldn't let you guys visit any sooner, the doctor didn't want any kids up here for a few days until the infection cleared. Come on in, we were about to turn on the TV to watch the ball drop."

Clint pulled a second visitor chair from the closet and dropped himself into it until he noticed Jeremiah standing at the foot of the bed with his arms raised, unable to climb onto the bed like André. Clint wrapped his left arm around the little boy's waist and lifted carefully, depositing him on the bed. "Careful, boys, watch out for all the wires."

"Uncle Baba sick? Mommy, Uncle Baba?"

"Yeah, buddy, Uncle Baba's been sick." Barney sat himself up to hug Simone as best he could, repositioning heart monitor wires. Even though his heart rate had not done anything erratic since they day they arrived, the doctors forced him to keep the lines in place. At least they turned down the volume; that incessant _beep_ was getting on his nerves. He pulled Jeremiah into a hug and playfully growled into his ear, then tugged André across the bed to lock them both into place. They both squirmed and squealed until Simone told them to calm down. 

The boys wanted to know everything about every machine in the room, and for the most part Barney only knew the basics of what each machine did. André wanted to know what the tube wrapped around his head did, so Barney pulled it off and turned it inside out so both boys could feel the air flow through it. After about a minute without the line, Barney's oxygen levels dropped and he did his best to hide the fact that he had difficulty drawing a breath. A nurse rapped on the door and entered without waiting for permission, scolding him for removing the line. As soon as she left, Barney made faces to her retreating form. "She's a witch, did you know that? That stick she keeps in her pocket is her evil magic wand."

André squinted at him, already highly skeptical for someone so young. "Nuh uh, Uncle Barney, witches aren't real."

"Yes she is! Look," Barney pointed to Clint, "she scared Uncle Clint so bad his hearing aids lost their color!" André crawled off the bed to inspect Clint's backup hearing aids with wide eyes. When he reached out to see if they felt any different, Barney stopped him. "I wouldn't touch them if I were you, the magic might zap your finger or something like that." André withdrew his hand and crawled back onto the bed.

"Uncle Barney, why do you have to be here? Mama didn't say."

So he spent much of the night telling them a new mostly-true story about how they went on a secret mission to find more Bad Guys and chased them all the way to the river. About how Barney and Clint fought hundreds of men ("It's clobberin' time" thrown in there at some point again), getting thrown into the river, and Uncle Clint helping him swim back to the dock. He left out the more gruesome and violent parts, especially the part about drowning and being dead. The boys didn't need to hear that part.

By the time Barney got to the part about being taken to the hospital, his story somehow included sorcerers and magic to explain why he was so sick the past few days. Jeremiah had crashed long ago, tucked under Barney's left arm with Simone lying to Barney's right. She lay on her elbow, idly playing with Barney's bangs as he told his fantastical story or resting her head on his shoulder. André listened as if he were engrossed in an action movie from Clint's lap. When Barney finished his story he waved at Clint.

_Turn on the TV, we've got about five more minutes._

Clint rolled his chair over to the bedside table and snatched the remote, flipping through the channels until he found a station broadcasting Times Square. Thousands of people crowded the streets and he wouldn't be surprised if it was actually more than a million people jammed into such a small space. André pointed at the screen each time he saw the huge countdown ball, practically vibrating with excitement in Clint's lap when he noticed the timer reach 30 seconds. This was the first year he was allowed to stay up this late and watch the ball drop.

The counter hit ten seconds, which meant André needed to practically shout each number as if not doing so would stall time. He had a wad of streamers clamped in his fist, ready to go as soon as the countdown hit zero. "5...4...3...2...1!"

André jumped up and down, throwing his handful of streamers into the air. Outside the window fireworks littered the sky on a backdrop of buildings and bright lights that comprised New York. Barney kissed Simone as if he could kiss the old awful year out of her, gently supporting her head with his hand. Clint sat back in his chair and smiled inwardly at his crazy little family, muttering to himself under his breath.

"Aww, New Years."


End file.
